It's even funnier when you realize that in Dark Souls, choosing the "dark" ending is the same thing as if you hadn't done anything at all. The story was convoluted enough in all 3 games, though, that I was never entirely sure just what I was fighting for, or why, or whether I made any real difference in the end.
“The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” - Antonio Gramsci
Loved this. Many thanks! I also think it's such a shame that Stalker's true ending had to include a long series of tedious shooting galleries, but in narrative terms I guess that just goes to show how achieving true change can never be painless and easy. Also it makes me feel very happy when people from the west discuss anything Stalker-related. Fun and fuzzy feeling, that.
DARK SOULS SPOILERS Ironically Kaathe is a contrarian example of what you're talking about in this video. You find him, he tells you "this is the way things REALLY are" and says that Gwyn is impeding the "natural" cycle (appeal to nature). So he's doing the same thing...from the other direction. He is crafting a narrative and trusting you to believe it, as many others have believed it. But as far as we know, he's just enforcing his own hegemony, not actually empowering humanity. We are never given evidence that his approach is true, and we are given some evidence that his actions have caused disaster in the past. He, himself, is a sort of C-Consciousness: he promises freedom and independence, but his methods create monsters, kill innocents, and destroy regions. Everything you said about the C-Consciousness is also true of Kaathe and his influence on places like Oolacile. Dark Souls as a whole has a bizarrely centrist message, because rather than coming out and saying which path is best, it cuts off before you see the consequences of it. Obviously linking the fire eventually just leads to the world collapsing again, but it's presumed that there's hundreds, if not thousands, of years of peace in between linking. It's clear that Gwyn is to blame for the Curse of the Undead, but it's never exactly established what happens when the Age of Fire goes away. And the beneficiaries of the Age of Fire - the Gods - are already gone by the time the game starts. So what benefit do they get from it?
I agree that Kaathe is potentially performing a similar manipulation of the narrative for his own benefit, that was what i was referring to with the oolacile stuff and the ambiguity of the 'dark lord' ending. That being said Kaathe doesn't have the opportunity to inject his narrative from the start or really use most of the other tactics i noted, aside from the appeal to nature as you pointed out, so I count him as notably different from Gwyn or the C-Consciousness in that respect. You're totally right though that Kaathe is likely using the same appeal to join the powerful and "fix the system from within" as the C-consciousness, that's a good point i didn't put together! Also Gwyndolin is still in Anor Londo and in a seat of power, there's benefit there for them even if everyone else has fled. Nito presumably controls skeletons, not hollows, so having humans be unable to permanently die and become well...fully dead, does hurt his power. So at least Nito and Gwyndolin receive some benefit, although Gwyn probably would only care about Gwyndolin (and he certainly wanted to protect Gwynevere too, before she left). That being said i don't at all disagree that there is a very centrist read that I think a lot of people get out of Dark Souls (That seems to be how i've seen Vaati read it) based on there being two sides that both lie and both want to use you and only care about their own benefit. Thank you for the comment :)
I think it's less that it has a "centrist message" and more that the developers don't really have a direct message in mind. Rather, they are using the two endings as a basic dialectic from which the player can examine their own thoughts on the matter and come to their own conclusion. Bloodborne does this very thoroughly with the subject of transhumanism, we are given examples where it goes horribly wrong, others where it seems to work out just fine, and some with no clear result. The Souls games and Bloodborne have always been big on there being "no easy answers", both in the sense that no NPC is unbiased, and in the sense that every solution to a given problem also presents a considerable risk.
@@mist8513 But they accomplish this by essentially muddling up what the actual results mean. So you can't make an educated choice between the two options because you don't have that information. You can't "come to your own conclusion" about something in a fantasy world when you don't know what the rules of that world are. If they gave more information and the two options had tradeoffs - for example, if the Age of Fire was "controlled but stable" and the Age of Dark was "free but difficult" then it might make more sense. Dark Souls shows us the NEGATIVES of both options ("control" and "mutation", respectively) but not the actual positives. So the only conclusion is that both of them are wrong and the real answer lies in the middle (if that's even possible).
I don't think it has a central message. When you get to Dark Souls III you see the true depths of cruelty Gwyn sank to in order to prevent the rise of humanity. What happened to Oolacile insinuates that humans taking over wouldn't be a perfect world, but still the natural progression. Besides Oolacile you haven't mentioned the human civilizations that did thrive in Dark Souls II such as the Iron Kingdom and Eleum Loyce, and it was the claiming if more and more power that lead to one's end and nobility that lead to the other's
I like how the Dlc for dark souls 3. trying to extend the age of fire leads to the world turning to dust. The rich (god) kings trying to extend their rule benefits no one in the end and ends with the last (human) kings being killed by a former slave that somehow survived all of history to kill them and leaves the power to shape the future in the hands of a child.
I remember getting the "I want the zone to disappear" wish granter ending in Shadow of Chernobyl the first time I played it. It was a real "what the fuck" moment that stuck in my mind for years afterward.
Minor nitpick: in STALKER you don't know the main character's name until the end, and your objective is to "kill Strelok". it's supposed to be a plot twist
I have to say, this video essay has left me impressed, I haven't had this sense of wonder and revelation in (sadly) a long time. I subscribed as the video ended... I try not to subscribe to many channels because in the past I've found myself procrastinating a lot in times I needed to focus in studying. At the time I write this that is no longer a problem, but I do try to keep my subscriptions (and media consumption in general) to a minimum... but then again, the format and ideas behind the video essay were so fascinating to me that I had to subscribe. I will be watching some of your other videos in time, and if they are a fraction as good as this one was, then they're truly good time invested.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R is easily one of my favorite game series of all time, second only to hotline miami. Really made me happy to see such an in-depth look at it.
Idunno how I get such a different read on some things than other people... I joined the C-Consciousness because I understood the explanation as "We lost control and now we're just trying to hold the Zone back from wrecking the entire planet whilst we figure out how to fix it." Then I loaded a save and blew those guys away because humans in general are too garbage to have that kind of power over anything, let alone some little pack of super-oligarch dudes who were already shady pricks to begin with.
Great video. I didn't play stalker but I'm guessing they rather meant strelOk, not strElok, as in sharpshooter in Russian. The pronounciation kinda took me out of the video a couple times lol.
That makes sense! Going back and listening, the English voice actors are less than consistent on the pronounciation, which I think contributed to me getting mixed up on that.
While I'm not against it at all, it's super odd for me to now hear all of this lore built to explain the Zone, when in the Tartovsky film it's defined by mystery. The wish room being a tool that vaguely human minds use for corrupt ends is very amusing to me 😅
Colonial belittingly of polytheists around 5:40 aside, great video, I am very excited about finding this channel along with Jacob Geller and Lets Talk About Stuff
I think that the brainwashed effect that the player is immersed in is amplified by the fact that the games are immensely difficult. Many people accept the games as a sort of challenge in the exact same way that their characters are accepting the challenges by even being a character in the positions they are in. The character of STALKER (I don't know his name because I never played it) didn't necessarily have to go to the zone before the player inhabited their body. They chose to accept the challenges despite all the people of their world knowing how dangers it is. I think that a similar interpretation can be extended to dark souls. This mutual motivation between the player and their character makes a huge contribution to immersion.
*Spoilers* Iirc, for Strelok, the C-conciousness captures him and wipes his memory but doesn't know who he is. They hear rumors of a stalker who is trying to reach the center if the zone to destroy it and send Strelok to kill him. That stalker is revealed to be Strelok himself. Small detail. The interplay between Freedom and Duty is also pretty interesting.
old video to comment on but in light of the discussion wrt dark souls and its themes: to me the ringed city makes the governing mindset of the age of fire abundantly clear. its stagnancy. the age of fire plods on, unchanging, and while the figureheads change places, the setting in 3 is more or less in the same place its in during 1. godkings rule over men, who lead short lives in service to an order that actively despises them, cursed to die for it to continue. will the age of dark be better? we dont really get to know. but it will be DIFFERENT. the age of fires stagnancy grinds the whole setting to dust, where there isnt even a shadow of something to fight over anymore. the choice is foreshadowed by the painting of ariandel, where despite the rot and the declining quality of life, friede fights tooth and nail to hold onto it because, having lost her purpose, she craves quiet stability even if its actively detrimental. she fights against the destruction of the painting because even though it might be better, it would be DIFFERENT. a new painting, a new world. its symbolic of how, even as the refusal to change destroys the world around them, the descendants of gwyn are unwilling to surrender the stability and power it affords them, even though its going to amount to nothing. similarly the destruction of oolacile is less the result of the inherent destruction of the abyss, but more the result of trying to balance the age of fires lies against the need for change. its here we learn that artorias was no abysswalker, and we learn that oolaciles specialty was time bending light magic. in the same vein, manus is endlessly searching for a pendant he lost that he can no longer acquire, even when its within grasp. not only does oolacile start to show us what gwyn will do to bury a secret, it shows us that by endlessly reaching towards a remembered past (chasing the legend of artorias, oolaciles literally Golden Time magic, manus trying to reclaim the person he was before the abyss) all we do is invite our own ruin upon us. oolaciles entire body of magical study is dedicated towards reaching out to a Golden Era thats since passed, and the fact that the past quite literally drags them into an unknowable future they cant prepare for (reaching out to the current time chosen undead, drags oolacile into the abyss that awaits the age of dark, everyone becomes warped monsters) is a symbol of how we cant spend all our time reminiscing about days gone by, or when the future becomes today, we will be swept up in it and become unrecognizable. if we want to recognize the future, we MUST play a part in it, and that entails breaking down the structures that seek to deprive us of power. and thus one must always Seek Seek Lest
What an amazing takedown of institutionalized propaganda systems. This is an incredibly clever, succinct, and thorough analysis on why every human being needs to develop critical thinking skills for a functional society to actually thrive.
Originally roadside picnic by the strugatsky brothers. Excellent, excellent book. It gets to the heart of what you discuss in this video! Wish more people talked about this poignant book instead of the watered down adaptations.
So, to be flippant (and to comment without thourough thinking for the algorythm) in this reading, Dark Souls 2 ends up being about how individual leadership and striving for change is futile and will lead to suffering and death in the face of a decaying system so entrenched, people forgot that it exists, while Dark Souls 3 is just... people revolting in late late late stage capitalism.
Yeah I suppose so! I'm much less familiar with the lore of those two games though so if anyone more familiar has a more comprehensive read I'd love to hear/see it :)
Fun gay fact of the day: enforced heteronormativity (and to an extent binary gender identity) seems to be a historical facet only of Europe. Ok, full disclosure, I don't know enough precolonial Africa to qualify the queerness of their societies... But I can speak for the Americas and Asia, where it was only post colonialism that homophobia became a systemic thing.
I somewhat disagree with your assertion regarding the C-Consiousness. As bad as the emissions are they are much more common following the destruction of the scientists in Call of Pripyat. And the emissions are also described as being the primary event that leads to the zone expanding. The only emissions that occur prior are very spread out and seem to be employed as a last resort by C-consciousness (military assault in soc, streloks group in Cs)
I mean im not sure the devs had a solid idea of what would come next the ending field is bright and colourful not like the environments in COP, if the devs wanted to make more games its kinda hard to only make prequels so they may have retconned their original as no zone = little possibility of a sequel, I'm not trying to imply they were only doing this for cash either - COP is a much more polished and seemingly "finished" game than SOC so they may have simply wanted another crack at making a stalker game without descending further into the past (which severly hampers what you can do with the status quo or returning characters as they have to reach a specific destination to match with the timeline of the last game) and thus a small retcon was an acceptable trade off for more freedom when creating the new story, not every game designer has the entirety of the story planned when they finish the first installment (i.e. unless G. Lucas is particularly freaky he probs didn't come up with the idea of leia being lukes sister until after he had already written their repeated smooching). TLDR my rebuttal is that it can be perfectly valid to critique/examine a piece of media separate from its sequels as often stories change during the course of writing them especially in cases of multiple installments and the possibility of some people leaving and new people joining the creative team in the meantime - i.e. its pretty fair to examine TLJ and ROTSW as different entities rather than one coherent vision
![[LIVE] : ONE ลุมพินี 89 | คู่เอก "ยอดไอคิว vs คิริลล์"](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Z3vYkHJ_5Ig/mqdefault.jpg)
Quote at the end from Stalker is chapter 76 of Tao Te Ching paraphrased
oh huh, I had no idea. That's good to know, thanks! :)
@@HuntressXThompson Tao Te Ching is a pro-anarchist text, every chapter is a single poetic page that is massively insightful
@@KLLWCH pro-anarchist? that's viewing in through western political categories.
I assume they meant that it's compatible with anarchist thought (or that it can be reasonably interpreted as such)
@@HuntressXThompson Daoism is spirituality/mysticism, not politics.
This is so good! Can't think of the last time I heard a fresh take on Dark Souls lore, and now this seems blindingly obvious.
glad to see you here
Your playlist of great essays brought me here. Recent but big fan of your work.
@@joelman1989same! Awesome job
"The world as we know it going to crash and burn... but lets not do anything hasty" - every centrist ever
It's even funnier when you realize that in Dark Souls, choosing the "dark" ending is the same thing as if you hadn't done anything at all. The story was convoluted enough in all 3 games, though, that I was never entirely sure just what I was fighting for, or why, or whether I made any real difference in the end.
“The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” - Antonio Gramsci
Loved this. Many thanks!
I also think it's such a shame that Stalker's true ending had to include a long series of tedious shooting galleries, but in narrative terms I guess that just goes to show how achieving true change can never be painless and easy.
Also it makes me feel very happy when people from the west discuss anything Stalker-related. Fun and fuzzy feeling, that.
This is great, and the spot on half nervous, half disturbing dark souls laugh completely slayed me.
DARK SOULS SPOILERS
Ironically Kaathe is a contrarian example of what you're talking about in this video. You find him, he tells you "this is the way things REALLY are" and says that Gwyn is impeding the "natural" cycle (appeal to nature). So he's doing the same thing...from the other direction. He is crafting a narrative and trusting you to believe it, as many others have believed it. But as far as we know, he's just enforcing his own hegemony, not actually empowering humanity. We are never given evidence that his approach is true, and we are given some evidence that his actions have caused disaster in the past. He, himself, is a sort of C-Consciousness: he promises freedom and independence, but his methods create monsters, kill innocents, and destroy regions. Everything you said about the C-Consciousness is also true of Kaathe and his influence on places like Oolacile.
Dark Souls as a whole has a bizarrely centrist message, because rather than coming out and saying which path is best, it cuts off before you see the consequences of it. Obviously linking the fire eventually just leads to the world collapsing again, but it's presumed that there's hundreds, if not thousands, of years of peace in between linking. It's clear that Gwyn is to blame for the Curse of the Undead, but it's never exactly established what happens when the Age of Fire goes away. And the beneficiaries of the Age of Fire - the Gods - are already gone by the time the game starts. So what benefit do they get from it?
I agree that Kaathe is potentially performing a similar manipulation of the narrative for his own benefit, that was what i was referring to with the oolacile stuff and the ambiguity of the 'dark lord' ending. That being said Kaathe doesn't have the opportunity to inject his narrative from the start or really use most of the other tactics i noted, aside from the appeal to nature as you pointed out, so I count him as notably different from Gwyn or the C-Consciousness in that respect. You're totally right though that Kaathe is likely using the same appeal to join the powerful and "fix the system from within" as the C-consciousness, that's a good point i didn't put together!
Also Gwyndolin is still in Anor Londo and in a seat of power, there's benefit there for them even if everyone else has fled. Nito presumably controls skeletons, not hollows, so having humans be unable to permanently die and become well...fully dead, does hurt his power. So at least Nito and Gwyndolin receive some benefit, although Gwyn probably would only care about Gwyndolin (and he certainly wanted to protect Gwynevere too, before she left). That being said i don't at all disagree that there is a very centrist read that I think a lot of people get out of Dark Souls (That seems to be how i've seen Vaati read it) based on there being two sides that both lie and both want to use you and only care about their own benefit. Thank you for the comment :)
I think it's less that it has a "centrist message" and more that the developers don't really have a direct message in mind. Rather, they are using the two endings as a basic dialectic from which the player can examine their own thoughts on the matter and come to their own conclusion. Bloodborne does this very thoroughly with the subject of transhumanism, we are given examples where it goes horribly wrong, others where it seems to work out just fine, and some with no clear result. The Souls games and Bloodborne have always been big on there being "no easy answers", both in the sense that no NPC is unbiased, and in the sense that every solution to a given problem also presents a considerable risk.
Exactly! Thank you :)
@@mist8513 But they accomplish this by essentially muddling up what the actual results mean. So you can't make an educated choice between the two options because you don't have that information. You can't "come to your own conclusion" about something in a fantasy world when you don't know what the rules of that world are. If they gave more information and the two options had tradeoffs - for example, if the Age of Fire was "controlled but stable" and the Age of Dark was "free but difficult" then it might make more sense. Dark Souls shows us the NEGATIVES of both options ("control" and "mutation", respectively) but not the actual positives. So the only conclusion is that both of them are wrong and the real answer lies in the middle (if that's even possible).
I don't think it has a central message. When you get to Dark Souls III you see the true depths of cruelty Gwyn sank to in order to prevent the rise of humanity. What happened to Oolacile insinuates that humans taking over wouldn't be a perfect world, but still the natural progression. Besides Oolacile you haven't mentioned the human civilizations that did thrive in Dark Souls II such as the Iron Kingdom and Eleum Loyce, and it was the claiming if more and more power that lead to one's end and nobility that lead to the other's
I like how the Dlc for dark souls 3. trying to extend the age of fire leads to the world turning to dust. The rich (god) kings trying to extend their rule benefits no one in the end and ends with the last (human) kings being killed by a former slave that somehow survived all of history to kill them and leaves the power to shape the future in the hands of a child.
I remember getting the "I want the zone to disappear" wish granter ending in Shadow of Chernobyl the first time I played it. It was a real "what the fuck" moment that stuck in my mind for years afterward.
Minor nitpick: in STALKER you don't know the main character's name until the end, and your objective is to "kill Strelok". it's supposed to be a plot twist
All gamers should see this video and instantly become anarchists.
Super informative. Been binging your videos while recovering from a depressive episode and they're super helpful!
Darks souls makes u think u are prometheus when u are actually sisyphus
I have to say, this video essay has left me impressed, I haven't had this sense of wonder and revelation in (sadly) a long time. I subscribed as the video ended... I try not to subscribe to many channels because in the past I've found myself procrastinating a lot in times I needed to focus in studying. At the time I write this that is no longer a problem, but I do try to keep my subscriptions (and media consumption in general) to a minimum... but then again, the format and ideas behind the video essay were so fascinating to me that I had to subscribe. I will be watching some of your other videos in time, and if they are a fraction as good as this one was, then they're truly good time invested.
The Algorithm is good, comments help the algorithm. comments are good. This is a comment that helps the Algorithm. This is good.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R is easily one of my favorite game series of all time, second only to hotline miami. Really made me happy to see such an in-depth look at it.
I was brought here by the irresistable power of the Eyeball Zone, and am glad the Eye Lords chose to force me to watch this video
Stalker is in my top 10 favorite films. I didn't know until this moment that there was a video game adaptation.
New subscriber and i just have to say your intro animation is really badass
Idunno how I get such a different read on some things than other people... I joined the C-Consciousness because I understood the explanation as "We lost control and now we're just trying to hold the Zone back from wrecking the entire planet whilst we figure out how to fix it."
Then I loaded a save and blew those guys away because humans in general are too garbage to have that kind of power over anything, let alone some little pack of super-oligarch dudes who were already shady pricks to begin with.
Just found you from NonCompete, and this was what caught my eye first. Good stuff. Subscribed.
Great video. I didn't play stalker but I'm guessing they rather meant strelOk, not strElok, as in sharpshooter in Russian. The pronounciation kinda took me out of the video a couple times lol.
That makes sense! Going back and listening, the English voice actors are less than consistent on the pronounciation, which I think contributed to me getting mixed up on that.
this shit slaps. lemme go tell everyone who'll listen about this channel
Excellent reading , with much possible application to grow as a person ,
Hey this is good stuff, didn't think about Dark Souls that way. Subscribed :D
Much goodness, thank you!
Great video
While I'm not against it at all, it's super odd for me to now hear all of this lore built to explain the Zone, when in the Tartovsky film it's defined by mystery. The wish room being a tool that vaguely human minds use for corrupt ends is very amusing to me 😅
Colonial belittingly of polytheists around 5:40 aside, great video, I am very excited about finding this channel along with Jacob Geller and Lets Talk About Stuff
Sorry, i didn't mean it to be belittling, but watching back I can see why it would come off that way. Glad the video was enjoyable otherwise :)
@@HuntressXThompson Many thanks for the response
# leave the throne ending is the only true dark souls choice ending
Commenting for visibility. Gettim Huntress
I really enjoyed this. Thank you.
Damn this is good and great.
Channel re-binge algorithm bump.
I think that the brainwashed effect that the player is immersed in is amplified by the fact that the games are immensely difficult. Many people accept the games as a sort of challenge in the exact same way that their characters are accepting the challenges by even being a character in the positions they are in. The character of STALKER (I don't know his name because I never played it) didn't necessarily have to go to the zone before the player inhabited their body. They chose to accept the challenges despite all the people of their world knowing how dangers it is. I think that a similar interpretation can be extended to dark souls. This mutual motivation between the player and their character makes a huge contribution to immersion.
for the algorithm!
I love this interpretation
Never heard of Stalker, but it sounds like the movie Stalker by Tarkovsky
Yeah, it's based partially on the film and partially on the short story that the film adapted.
*Spoilers*
Iirc, for Strelok, the C-conciousness captures him and wipes his memory but doesn't know who he is. They hear rumors of a stalker who is trying to reach the center if the zone to destroy it and send Strelok to kill him. That stalker is revealed to be Strelok himself. Small detail. The interplay between Freedom and Duty is also pretty interesting.
old video to comment on but in light of the discussion wrt dark souls and its themes: to me the ringed city makes the governing mindset of the age of fire abundantly clear. its stagnancy. the age of fire plods on, unchanging, and while the figureheads change places, the setting in 3 is more or less in the same place its in during 1. godkings rule over men, who lead short lives in service to an order that actively despises them, cursed to die for it to continue. will the age of dark be better? we dont really get to know. but it will be DIFFERENT. the age of fires stagnancy grinds the whole setting to dust, where there isnt even a shadow of something to fight over anymore. the choice is foreshadowed by the painting of ariandel, where despite the rot and the declining quality of life, friede fights tooth and nail to hold onto it because, having lost her purpose, she craves quiet stability even if its actively detrimental. she fights against the destruction of the painting because even though it might be better, it would be DIFFERENT. a new painting, a new world. its symbolic of how, even as the refusal to change destroys the world around them, the descendants of gwyn are unwilling to surrender the stability and power it affords them, even though its going to amount to nothing.
similarly the destruction of oolacile is less the result of the inherent destruction of the abyss, but more the result of trying to balance the age of fires lies against the need for change. its here we learn that artorias was no abysswalker, and we learn that oolaciles specialty was time bending light magic. in the same vein, manus is endlessly searching for a pendant he lost that he can no longer acquire, even when its within grasp. not only does oolacile start to show us what gwyn will do to bury a secret, it shows us that by endlessly reaching towards a remembered past (chasing the legend of artorias, oolaciles literally Golden Time magic, manus trying to reclaim the person he was before the abyss) all we do is invite our own ruin upon us. oolaciles entire body of magical study is dedicated towards reaching out to a Golden Era thats since passed, and the fact that the past quite literally drags them into an unknowable future they cant prepare for (reaching out to the current time chosen undead, drags oolacile into the abyss that awaits the age of dark, everyone becomes warped monsters) is a symbol of how we cant spend all our time reminiscing about days gone by, or when the future becomes today, we will be swept up in it and become unrecognizable. if we want to recognize the future, we MUST play a part in it, and that entails breaking down the structures that seek to deprive us of power.
and thus one must always Seek Seek Lest
Fantastic video. Stalker probably my favourite game of all time.
What an amazing takedown of institutionalized propaganda systems. This is an incredibly clever, succinct, and thorough analysis on why every human being needs to develop critical thinking skills for a functional society to actually thrive.
Originally roadside picnic by the strugatsky brothers. Excellent, excellent book. It gets to the heart of what you discuss in this video! Wish more people talked about this poignant book instead of the watered down adaptations.
7k subs. Not bad
amazing
So, to be flippant (and to comment without thourough thinking for the algorythm) in this reading, Dark Souls 2 ends up being about how individual leadership and striving for change is futile and will lead to suffering and death in the face of a decaying system so entrenched, people forgot that it exists, while Dark Souls 3 is just... people revolting in late late late stage capitalism.
Yeah I suppose so! I'm much less familiar with the lore of those two games though so if anyone more familiar has a more comprehensive read I'd love to hear/see it :)
change da world
my final message. 16:30
on the noosphere and its distinguished intellectual history
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noosphere
Fun gay fact of the day: enforced heteronormativity (and to an extent binary gender identity) seems to be a historical facet only of Europe.
Ok, full disclosure, I don't know enough precolonial Africa to qualify the queerness of their societies...
But I can speak for the Americas and Asia, where it was only post colonialism that homophobia became a systemic thing.
I somewhat disagree with your assertion regarding the C-Consiousness. As bad as the emissions are they are much more common following the destruction of the scientists in Call of Pripyat. And the emissions are also described as being the primary event that leads to the zone expanding. The only emissions that occur prior are very spread out and seem to be employed as a last resort by C-consciousness (military assault in soc, streloks group in Cs)
I mean im not sure the devs had a solid idea of what would come next the ending field is bright and colourful not like the environments in COP, if the devs wanted to make more games its kinda hard to only make prequels so they may have retconned their original as no zone = little possibility of a sequel, I'm not trying to imply they were only doing this for cash either - COP is a much more polished and seemingly "finished" game than SOC so they may have simply wanted another crack at making a stalker game without descending further into the past (which severly hampers what you can do with the status quo or returning characters as they have to reach a specific destination to match with the timeline of the last game) and thus a small retcon was an acceptable trade off for more freedom when creating the new story, not every game designer has the entirety of the story planned when they finish the first installment (i.e. unless G. Lucas is particularly freaky he probs didn't come up with the idea of leia being lukes sister until after he had already written their repeated smooching).
TLDR my rebuttal is that it can be perfectly valid to critique/examine a piece of media separate from its sequels as often stories change during the course of writing them especially in cases of multiple installments and the possibility of some people leaving and new people joining the creative team in the meantime - i.e. its pretty fair to examine TLJ and ROTSW as different entities rather than one coherent vision
Video amazing, STALKER great, thanks
Algorithm comment
I haven't played Stalker but the more I listened to you the more I believe that the C-Consciousness is a metaphor for communism.
I love your work
Good to see a fellow anarcho-communist :D
👍👍👍
"Strelok, the character you play as--" Uh, spoilers!
Sorry :X
Finally! The Dark Souls analysis I have been looking for. Thanks for making this video!