What the fuck? What the fuck was that shit? That made no damn sense. You fought the god of time and then the ship was somehow saved? Why was the god of time even there?
Where did Beardman get his crazy time bending psychic powers? Is he like Samson? Is that it? His power is derived from his hair? Except instead of long flowing locks, it's a magnificent beard?
Whoever the lead story writer for this was, they were obviously fueled by mushrooms and vodka. I can see the writing process now.
Lead story writer: "I know! Lets give the protagonist superpowers! That would be cool wouldn't?
Assistant story writer: Yeah that would be cool. But, don't you think we should explain it?
Lead story writer: "Nope!"
Lead story writer: You know what else would be cool? If you got to fight Chronos the god of time! Wouldn't that be awesome?"
Assistant story writer: "Yeah, I guess, but why would you fight him?
Lead story writer: "Fuck you! That's why!"
I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out what's going on and how it relates to what happened on the ship back in whatever-the-hell-year-it-was. Most of it, I believe, has at least a passing explanation as being part of some extended metaphor, though it's not one anybody sits you down and explains to you.
That, I can handle. I can even appreciate the happy ending - though it got glitched in the video, the security guy's supposed to be tending to the captain, who he shot on accident - if only because it's not the bullshit cliffhanger I was expecting. However it happened, Beardman intervened at a precise moment where someone doing something different meant people wouldn't die. The ship lives, the crew lives, and they all went on to do whatever it is Russians do. Although Beardman's power never gets [strike]a rational[/strike] any explanation, the rest of the above isn't too complicated for me to grasp.
I have no fucking idea why Chronos is there. I was dumbfounded. I mean, what the hell. Seriously, what the hell o_O
Edit: There are three choices with the ending, Chronos' (ugh) other fingers lead to the engineer and the other officer.
The engineer's happens in his office by the reactor chamber. You have the choice of giving him the model ship ("Let them decommission this instead"), which keeps him from trying to force the ship loose. As for the officer, you have the choice to not give him the message from HQ, and instead go down a deck to help the crew with the repairs.
Apparently, any of these three guys could have kept the whole thing from going kersplodey.
I told you. I told you. Also you got a different last puzzle than I, as I told you on msn.
What was your last puzzle?
From what it looked like to me, as Phil, you had to go and stand between the door and the captain, so you got shot and not the captain.
At least, that's what I would have done.
Or I would have opened the door for them.
I guess when you started working the what you calls it as other guy, you accidentally triggered the captain, and "saved" him instead of helping the XO.
I was the guy that chews the captain out in the reactor.
I had to give him a model of the ship instead of yell at him.
At first I was like :?
but then I was like o_O
and at then end I was like eeeeuuuuurrrghhharrrrrrrmybrrraaaaaainnnn
There are so many things left unanswered. But this one stand outs from the herd of bright green elephants playing trombones and wearing odd hats.
WHAT. THE. FUCK. WAS. PHIL. THERE. FOR? I mean, was he the representation of shit going bad? Was he just a dude that wandered the ship? o_O
Awesome start, for sure, but yeah I don't understand the premise of the game at all. The opening talks about these ancient warriors who are in a haunted forest or some shit that's killing them, and they have to go back and fight their way out, or go forward and try to get through some tangled bushes.
Then it's modern time and you're a guy in a marooned icebreaker ship reliving their memories of how they fucked up and ran into an ice zombie spawning ground.
What. The. Fuck.
Ok this was all the way back from page 2, and after watching this whole LP, I have to stick to my initial reaction after watching only the first set.
What. The. Fuck.
The 'parallel' story with the guy in the woods went fucking nowhere, while in the meantime the modern story went completely off the rails, crashed into the station, and destroyed the entire surrounding city. With toxic chemicals, or something.
EDIT:
Actually, you know what? I think Klyka said it best.
At first I was like :?
but then I was like o_O
and at then end I was like eeeeuuuuurrrghhharrrrrrrmybrrraaaaaainnnn
There are so many things left unanswered. But this one stand outs from the herd of bright green elephants playing trombones and wearing odd hats.
WHAT. THE. FUCK. WAS. PHIL. THERE. FOR? I mean, was he the representation of shit going bad? Was he just a dude that wandered the ship? o_O
Pretty much. Like everything else Beardman deals with in the present, you have to think in abstractions before any of it starts to make sense. Phil made appearances whenever something really big was happening that directly tied into the fate of the ship: he appeared when the XO gave the message to the captain, he was outside the reactor around when the engineer told the captain off, and he was at the end of the infirmary section when everything went straight to hell.
Basically he wasn't any one guy so much as the sum total of everything that went seriously wrong.
At first I was like :?
but then I was like o_O
and at then end I was like eeeeuuuuurrrghhharrrrrrrmybrrraaaaaainnnn
There are so many things left unanswered. But this one stand outs from the herd of bright green elephants playing trombones and wearing odd hats.
WHAT. THE. FUCK. WAS. PHIL. THERE. FOR? I mean, was he the representation of shit going bad? Was he just a dude that wandered the ship? o_O
Pretty much. Like everything else Beardman deals with in the present, you have to think in abstractions before any of it starts to make sense. Phil made appearances whenever something really big was happening that directly tied into the fate of the ship: he appeared when the XO gave the message to the captain, he was outside the reactor around when the engineer told the captain off, and he was at the end of the infirmary section when everything went straight to hell.
Basically he wasn't any one guy so much as the sum total of everything that went seriously wrong.
I have some theories that thinly explain what might have happened with the plot:
Chronos is the iceberg, sealed within as a punishment for being a loser titan from that war between them and the Greek Gods. Maybe.
He is not to blame for the accident but rather the sins of the crew and their constant incompitence/selfishness. Human nature became manifest as the "Phil" creature stalking the ship, and after the shit went down with the three big characters and the iceberg, a time bubble sealed the whole mess up and everyone left within. Chronos was freed by accident and stuck in the bubble created by the crew.
Beardman goes to rendevous with the ship on scheduale only to be killed by the initial ice breaking under his sled. His soul is yanked into the ship, becomes Chronos's avatar, gains super powers, and begins to free the ship and himself.
He eventually suceeds along lines similar to Danko and his heroic trek through the swamp, although why that story had any real relevance beyond metaphor is beyond me. He uses his accumulated powers to reverse the events of the ship hitting Chronos's prison and setting things back to normal. Beardman is then ressurected through time and is rescued from death by the crew and the captain.
And they all live happily ever after.
o_O
I think.
It's too late for this goddamn shit. :?
I'm going to bed, Good LP regardless of fucked up story Helloween. I especially enjoyed the bit with the Necronomicon. Delightful little book that is. :P
I patiently await the return of Bruce and more Allllllien murderings in AVP.
Just finished the LP. To be fair, I think Helloween missed a plot photo or two.
Also, the captain got hurt when the glass broke in his face, not by being shot.
edit: Wait, isn't Beard Man only there because the ship broke down. So if the ship didn't break down, why is he still there?
Ah, I see. Didn't notice that at first about the glass.
Beardman was supposed to be picked up by the ship, according to the very first note he gets. Like I said earlier, it's as if in the real world, the ship never broke down, but when he gets there he's in some alternate history where the reactor melted down and the ship is left derelict.
Corehealer: Amazingly, that's one of the less confusing explanations I've heard for why Chronos is there. The more complicated ones wind up being some variant of "no Beardman, you are the time gods." As for the story, I think that's more a parallel with the captain's state of mind. Both start out trying to lead their people to safety, only to initially fail and have their people turn on them. Danko's act of desperation ultimately saves his group, and the captain attempts something similar to win back his crew's loyalty; whether he even gets to that point depends on his engineer or the XO showing a bit of compassion when he needs it most.
That's the only way I can figure it fits, although I'm sure I'm missing something. The whole thing feels like some crazy fever dream somebody thought up after trying to speedrun Pathologic on acid "for fun."
So nice to read a completed LP on this forum. Thanks Helloween!
My interpretation in order of complexity from the most straightforward to least:
The ship broke due to hitting an iceberg, was repaired and sailed off. This is the story without any strange stuff.
The ship broke, but the crewmen's mistakes were fixed back in time, which led to the first iteration of this story.
The ship broke due to the manifestation of the evil actions and minds of the crew. As it manifested as ice (and as they were the cause) they too were ice demons. The actions of the player show how small compassion and courage in face of adversity can cause great change. There is no real ending as to whether the ship was left derelict or was saved, that's for the player to decide - the game explored both versions.
The last explanation is the most abstract, as is the character of the last boss. The heat, red and radiation in general were a representation of the captain's heart and goodwill towards his ship, helping you help the ship (as opposed by blue, cold and ice.)
In the end it was the captain's heart that stopped the senior crew from escaping, but by then the story is rather more metaphorical than in the beginning anyway. The reactor core is the symbol for the heart obviously, it was repaired and in the end saved them all. What I'm missing is what the world chained in ice represents. By my explanation then it would be the totality of their failures, how there is nothing left when all of them get it wrong. But I think the explanation to that lies in the storybook snippets, can anyone recall what they faced in the forest when everything was at its darkest?
Yeah they never did explain the earth formation vision and then the globe trapped in the ice barbed wire in one of the mess halls.
Chronos was cool. At first I sort of thought he showed up because Beardman was causing time shenanigans and he was like "cut that shit out," but then he helps you out after you... collect enough red glowy things? I dunno.
If Beardman's trek throughout the whole fucking ship was in soul-form, I guess that makes all the visions and demons and everything make more sense. They were all the lost, trapped souls of the sailors I guess. Though then this gives rise to the question of how they were in the past when the ship was fucked up. Maybe they were crewmen who had given up hope and gone mad, and whose souls eventually became the monsters in the present, so you see them as monsters since you are all metaphorical when you are a soul I guess.
Chronos was cool. At first I sort of thought he showed up because Beardman was causing time shenanigans and he was like "cut that shit out," but then he helps you out after you... collect enough red glowy things? I dunno
In the battle, if you look at beardman's fingertips, they glow red when you get a kill, and blue when Chronos gets a kill. Presumably, you had to beat Chronos at killing mans to prove that you were worthy to turn back time.
Chronos was cool. At first I sort of thought he showed up because Beardman was causing time shenanigans and he was like "cut that shit out," but then he helps you out after you... collect enough red glowy things? I dunno
In the battle, if you look at beardman's fingertips, they glow red when you get a kill, and blue when Chronos gets a kill. Presumably, you had to beat Chronos at killing mans to prove that you were worthy to turn back time.
I actually took the Chronos fight as a Literal fight against time where you're using your awesome Beardman Life-Saving Powers to save the last of the People on the ship before Chronos can take them away. (Presumably, they're the guys on deck who you shot earlier after jumping out of the Helicopter or something?) After you've saved them, Chronos goes "Hey, you're pretty cool. I want to show you something."
And then you can be Phil (Death?) and change things at the crash and then that other guy and change things at the crash so the ship doesn't explode.
I kind of took the whole game as "Everybody died. Including you. And to save yourself, you have to save everybody." And it's just some sort of crazy chain reaction deal where if the ship wasn't as fucked as it was, the people would have lived, and they would have caught Beardman, like at the ending, before he fell to his death at the start of the game.
But I honestly haven't, nor can I, think on it too much to reason it out. That's....just what I'm going to go with and move on. Somebody probably said what I did, or something even better, but I just finished watching the last two sets since I got behind on my LPs, took about five minutes to go "What the hell" and started posting after reading the last couple of posts.
Anyways, that was great fun anyways, as there were plenty of entertaining bits throughout. Thanks as always for playing the game, Hell, and I look forward to the next LP in which the story will assuredly make more sense.
Helloween did another game from my childhood as one of his Favourite games. This is good as I am going home from holiday today and I'm bummed out a bit. Thanks for cheering me up Hello.
Sorry for the bump, but this was one of the few playthroughs I've seen of the game.
I'll say it straight. This game has the best story of any videogame ever made. It also requires more brains
than the average gamer has. Honestly I'm disappointed at all the WTFs here when if you actually took the time to THINK, the story begins to come together. You have to pay very close attention to everything that happens especially toward the end.
The game is trying to make a commentary about the problems of humanity and the world. This is also evident when at one point there is a globe trapped in icy chains. It's important to note that this occurs right after the prison scene where you see the world through the perspective of your enemies. The end of this scene has you entering the mind of the guy who is hitting the pan on the floor. You then see the world being formed as we know it today. The events on the North Wind are perhaps meant to mirror the problems of the real world.
The most central theme of the game is the inability of people to understand each other and consequently close their mind to others. You can see this almost everywhere, from the story of Danko, to the infighting between the Captain, the executive officer, the security officer, and the engineer, to the way that each enemy is literally locked inside their mind with a prison of their own doing. Every problem in the game arises from the close mindedness of each character, their inability to understand and accept what others think.
A good analysis of the story was done by someone on another forum. I'll repost it here so hopefully more attention comes to this game.
The game does not take place in reality, but rather a sort of afterlife (explained in more detail later). This can be seen in the prisoner's cafeteria where you can see into a void through the hole above the globe, which is the same void that you see later in the final chapter. This explains the odd state of the crew. As is seen in the echoes, there are two phases of corruption, one which produces zombie-like but still human enemies, and another which produces bizarre and otherworldly foes. The zombie-like foes likely come from the ship's reactor failure which lead to the massive radiation poisoning seen in the sick bay scenes (oddly enough, Arktika class ice breakers used pressurized water reactors, while the North Wind uses a Graphite Moderated reactor. The latter is famed for its involvement in Chernobyl. There may be some intentional parallel here, though). This would explain why they are present when the ship and crew are still alive. All of this leads to widespread fear, and after the ship effectively collapses during the helicopter's attempted escape, those who are left find their will broken as the temperatures continue to plummet. As a parallel to the story of Danko, they become bound by their own fear to the point where they sacrifice their humanity and become warped in this world of stasis. Notice that all the warped enemies feature locks, bars, chains, or other bindings (save, perhaps, the flys, though they may still be bound in some fashion. It may also be noted that all of these enemies, including the fly and Kronos, are blind, their eyes bound or altogether missing).
The nature of these enemies also leads us back to Alex. If Alex is dead, how is it that he can die again at the hands of these enemies? The simple truth of the matter is that he can't, just like the surviving crew could not. Notice that his "life" is represented by heat. Think of this, instead, as will. If his will is broken, then like the crew, he surrenders and is bound to the ship. Will, in such a situation, can easily correspond to heat, since when one is cold it is hard to keep moving. You simply want to sit there and drift off into the darkness...
What, then, is the world in which the story takes place? The mental echo offers the key to this. It is a world formed by the fears and regrets of the crew, it is a world of memory, a mnemosyne; ethereal in form, but real to those whose memories are bound within. This is why changing the memories of the crew also changes the reality of this world--it is formed by memory, and so can be changed by it. It is a world stuck forever in 1968, or rather the memories thereof, locked in time just as much as it is ice.
This leads us to a few anomalies—the strange cloaked man you cross several times aboard the ship and then during the final chapter, and the figure of Kronos. On these items, I am still uncertain. One suspicion is that the cloaked man is, in fact, the captain, or rather his wrathful emotions embodied, still wandering his ship and striking down those whom he crosses (a world formed be memory can also be populated by emotions given form). This would explain why he appears at the end, but at the same time, during the scenes with him, you don't take his frame of reference. Instead, you take your own. In other words, it is quite possible that this figure is, in fact, Alex (he does bear a similarity, especially to faceless corpses of Alex encountered in the first chapter. If I could read the Russian on his coat, that might offer a clue, but I am unable...). This is why, when you do a mental echo on him, you see into your own memories--memories of memories (also note that Alex's hand is different during the final area--there is no coat or glove. Oddly enough, though, if you look at yourself via mental echo, you're still in your coat and gloves...). Of course, this explanation seems odd due to the encounters while on the ship—why would you be haunting the ship and why would you kill yourself? It may be that there are two different figures, but the difference in Alex's hand may be key in figuring out who he is, and this also leads us to Kronos.
Edit: Upon reviewing the final chapter, I noticed something curious. Though it may appear at a glance to be the same faceless coat-wearing man in all three scenes, it seems reality is otherwise. I first noticed, when looking at the engineer's area, that the figure seemed odd. He was made of stone, or at least, looked like it. I then headed to the security officer's area, and this time, the figure was coated in blood. Finally, I headed for the first mate, and found the figure covered in black spots. Though I may be a bit off, it seems that these figures are in fact the embodiment of the respective crew members' fears. Each area opens with them saying something expressing their current state, and the figures sit opposite of them, except for the first mate's. The areas as a whole reflect their personalities, warped as they are by now. The security officer goes on about how he must strike first, lest they devour him. His area is a table which consists of an unhinged door supported by swords and guns, with chairs made likewise. The engineer murmurs a message of futility and surrender. His area is a bed supported by gears, books, and a globe, reflecting his call to simply lie down and surrender. The first mate expresses paranoia, saying that they must be tainted and deceived, and his area reflects his desperation to be in control (the chess table seems a bit off, though I'm no expert on the matter. The king is knocked over, but is not checkmated. Rather, the rook is in checkmate, which means it may have been a mistake of placement...). I would be curious if anyone could confirm if the appearances of these figures while exploring the ship bear similar resemblances to the ones here (stone, blood, and corruption/tar)./Edit
I at first thought Kronos might be the captain, but this didn't quite work out. Kronos is the antithesis of the captain. Whereas the captain is represented by red, the color of heat and blood, Kronos is represented by blue, the color of cold and ice, a distinction which is rather important in the game (notice, for example, that when you shoot enemies, they're wounded with red, while when you're hit, the screen flashes blue). Kronos is, then, one of two things, either an amalgam of the three (engineer, first mate, and security officer, relating to how Kronos struck down his father (the captain) and seized the throne, but out of fear, began to strike down his own children (the crew) who would usurp him as he had his father (they had taken out the captain, and in the end, it seemed the crew was poised to take them out were it not for the helicopter). Note that it is Kronos, the titan, not Khronos, god of time. They may have intentionally merged the two, though, due to the hourglass/stasis symbolism, as well as the fact that Khronos was said to have three heads, akin to the heads of these three), or the fearful and wrathful emotions found within the whole of the crew (they both seem to be possible as both can be related back to the story of Kronos, though the parallel is a bit stronger with the three, especially the first mate). Kronos stands in the void where heat and confidence once arose, and where now only fear and despair can be found. While the crew, or what's left of them, yearn for freedom, Kronos strikes them down, chaining them to their prison of fear. Thus, they must be freed and this fear which has seized the heart dispelled. And this brings us back to the previous bit.
The fight with Kronos is activated by using the mental echo on a red, glowing hydrogen atom. This atom is seen once before inhabiting the outline of the captain, and is linked with the heart/reactor due both to its color (that of blood) and its nature (Hydrogen, often associated with the nuclear process due to the Hydrogen bomb). What does this all mean? Basically, in that final fight, you are not Alexander, but rather the captain. Your goal is to dissipate the fear of your crew, embodied by Kronos, and finally give them peace. In the past, when the captain attempted to destroy this fear, he failed both in reality and in this battle, leading the ship to be encased thoroughly, inside and out, in ice (during the battle, the ship still seems to be in repair, as opposed to when you come across it). This parallels the story of Danko up to that point where Danko seems fated to perish at the hands of his people's fear. But, due to Alexander, the captain succeeds in quelling Kronos, the collective fears of his crew, and then needs only to reverse what happened in reality. Thus, he faces the three, locked in prisons of their own making just as with the rest of the crew, and along with them is Alex. Upon dispelling the fear both in reality as well as in memory, the captain is able to lead his crew at last to peace, mirroring the shift in Danko's story in the end.
That analysis makes sense but it's also not conclusive. It's possible that's what the developers meant, and it's possible they meant something else. It's just too ambiguous to know for sure.
If that was the meaning of the story, then it was told in a very poor fashion. None of what that analysis says was apparent to me as I watched Helloween play the game.
Like any creative medium, you can have a large number of vastly different readings that are all valid, as long as the content or narrative support it. That reading is interesting, but no more definitive than any other. The fact that the game conveys those ideas so poorly can be cited as subtlety, but I think that's giving the game too much credit. It's a fun game with an interesting, if batshit crazy, story but it's execution is clearly lacking in certain areas. At least Pathologic revealed itself if you could tolerate the poor mechanics and idiosyncrasies. This game just never quite pulls together into a cohesive story.
If that was the meaning of the story then it was told in a very poor fashion, none of what that analysis says was apparent to me as I watched Helloween play the game.
Yeah. Makes sense when you look at all that in detail after the fact. But while playing the game? Fuck no. Too much assumption rather than fact.
If that was the meaning of the story then it was told in a very poor fashion, none of what that analysis says was apparent to me as I watched Helloween play the game.
Yeah. Makes sense when you look at all that in detail after the fact. But while playing the game? Fuck no. Too much assumption rather than fact.
I agree. There are some plot things that can be left ambiguous or presented in such a way as to allow the player to imagine cool ways that the plot fits together behinds the scenes, but this game just had waaaaaay to much artsy fartsy nonsense without too much context or coherent explanations. It was just like, hey, we'll end the game by dumping biblical passages and a Greek Titan on their ass, without any explanation whatsoever.
If that was the meaning of the story then it was told in a very poor fashion, none of what that analysis says was apparent to me as I watched Helloween play the game.
Yeah. Makes sense when you look at all that in detail after the fact. But while playing the game? Fuck no. Too much assumption rather than fact.
I agree. There are some plot things that can be left ambiguous or presented in such a way as to allow the player to imagine cool ways that the plot fits together behinds the scenes, but this game just had waaaaaay to much artsy fartsy nonsense without too much context or coherent explanations. It was just like, hey, we'll end the game by dumping biblical passages and a Greek Titan on their ass, without any explanation whatsoever.
What kills me is the titan actively sabotages the whole thing. There are any number of interpretations as for what's happening - Alex literally traveling through a broken ship and saving lives, the ship as some kind of purgatory, the Cold as something sentient that preserved the tragedy, Alex having some kind of incredibly fucked-up epiphany - but they all run with the theme of "things got so bad on the ship that something noticed, and now you're caught in the middle. Survive and save as many as you can, and see if you can't learn something from this mess."
With a little more care in establishing the otherworldly setting - maybe giving the player more concrete objectives and ironing out the timeline hiccups - I think it could have well established that you didn't really need to know why this was happening. The important part is discovering just how little needed to be done, at just the right moment, to save the ship. Or... something. I dunno, but Chronos puts an axe to the thing. "Oh, it's just the god of time acting up again. Let's have a smite-off!"
They also could've made the captain a little less obviously loopy. I mean, if the XO wasn't so opportunistic and petty I would've been perfectly fine with him relieving the captain of his command. I'm comfortable saying that a guy who sails by gut intuition and ignores onboard indicators should not be put in charge of a nuclear anything.
If that was the meaning of the story then it was told in a very poor fashion, none of what that analysis says was apparent to me as I watched Helloween play the game.
Yeah. Makes sense when you look at all that in detail after the fact. But while playing the game? Fuck no. Too much assumption rather than fact.
I agree. There are some plot things that can be left ambiguous or presented in such a way as to allow the player to imagine cool ways that the plot fits together behinds the scenes, but this game just had waaaaaay to much artsy fartsy nonsense without too much context or coherent explanations. It was just like, hey, we'll end the game by dumping biblical passages and a Greek Titan on their ass, without any explanation whatsoever.
What kills me is the titan actively sabotages the whole thing. There are any number of interpretations as for what's happening - Alex literally traveling through a broken ship and saving lives, the ship as some kind of purgatory, the Cold as something sentient that preserved the tragedy, Alex having some kind of incredibly fucked-up epiphany - but they all run with the theme of "things got so bad on the ship that something noticed, and now you're caught in the middle. Survive and save as many as you can, and see if you can't learn something from this mess."
With a little more care in establishing the otherworldly setting - maybe giving the player more concrete objectives and ironing out the timeline hiccups - I think it could have well established that you didn't really need to know why this was happening. The important part is discovering just how little needed to be done, at just the right moment, to save the ship. Or... something. I dunno, but Chronos puts an axe to the thing. "Oh, it's just the god of time acting up again. Let's have a smite-off!"
They also could've made the captain a little less obviously loopy. I mean, if the XO wasn't so opportunistic and petty I would've been perfectly fine with him relieving the captain of his command. I'm comfortable saying that a guy who sails by gut intuition and ignores onboard indicators should not be put in charge of a nuclear anything.
First, I'm wondering how many here actually played the game and completed it. A lot of opinions here seem to be second hand. Getting your opinions from the video isn't the same as actually playing the game itself. It's no substitute for a real playthrough, and especially in this game where you have to pay attention to everything that goes on and more importantly what it means in the greater context of the story
The captain wasn't really that loopy, at least no more so than anyone else in the game. Every character in the game is flawed so it makes sense. Remember what the captain says "sail long enough with the ship and it becomes a part of you." The captain knows if the ship returns it will be decommissioned, which is his worst fear. He wants to prove the ship's capability by persevering and completing the mission.
The very last level of the game, the one where you have to choose which of the three characters minds to go into, is where you really see the essence of each character. In particular, take a look at the chessboard beneath the XO, the arrangement of the chairs and what they are made of on the security officers table, and the objects and cage around the engineer.Remember that symbolism is everything in this game, and in this game more so than many others, lots of detail will be missed by only spectating via a video.
I'll say straight out that this game was never designed to be everyone's cup of tea. It does veer towards the artsy side. Originality is so rare these days though that I think the pros far exceed the shortcomings of this game.
I agree. There are some plot things that can be left ambiguous or presented in such a way as to allow the player to imagine cool ways that the plot fits together behinds the scenes, but this game just had waaaaaay to much artsy fartsy nonsense without too much context or coherent explanations. It was just like, hey, we'll end the game by dumping biblical passages and a Greek Titan on their ass, without any explanation whatsoever.
If an explanation was given then the entire thing would have been ruined. The entire point was that you were supposed to think what it meant and it wasn't handed to you on a silver platter. I haven't a seen a game so deep in symbolism since Planescape Torment. Chronos makes sense in the context of the rest of the story. The Titan doesn't sabotage anything. He's the explanation for what gives the protagonist the ability to change time throughout the game and make the critical decision at the very end.
The whole thing is pretty much like those Russian independent films of the 70s put into the form of a game, reminds me a lot of STALKER(movie which the STALKER game was loosely based off, you should watch it if you completed the game since it actually makes a lot more sense)
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Where did Beardman get his crazy time bending psychic powers? Is he like Samson? Is that it? His power is derived from his hair? Except instead of long flowing locks, it's a magnificent beard?
Whoever the lead story writer for this was, they were obviously fueled by mushrooms and vodka. I can see the writing process now.
Lead story writer: "I know! Lets give the protagonist superpowers! That would be cool wouldn't?
Assistant story writer: Yeah that would be cool. But, don't you think we should explain it?
Lead story writer: "Nope!"
Lead story writer: You know what else would be cool? If you got to fight Chronos the god of time! Wouldn't that be awesome?"
Assistant story writer: "Yeah, I guess, but why would you fight him?
Lead story writer: "Fuck you! That's why!"
shame if something happened to it
like some COHESION
That, I can handle. I can even appreciate the happy ending - though it got glitched in the video, the security guy's supposed to be tending to the captain, who he shot on accident - if only because it's not the bullshit cliffhanger I was expecting. However it happened, Beardman intervened at a precise moment where someone doing something different meant people wouldn't die. The ship lives, the crew lives, and they all went on to do whatever it is Russians do. Although Beardman's power never gets [strike]a rational[/strike] any explanation, the rest of the above isn't too complicated for me to grasp.
I have no fucking idea why Chronos is there. I was dumbfounded. I mean, what the hell. Seriously, what the hell o_O
Edit: There are three choices with the ending, Chronos' (ugh) other fingers lead to the engineer and the other officer.
Apparently, any of these three guys could have kept the whole thing from going kersplodey.
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I was the guy that chews the captain out in the reactor.
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a Wizard did it.
Beardman is actually...
but then I was like o_O
and at then end I was like eeeeuuuuurrrghhharrrrrrrmybrrraaaaaainnnn
There are so many things left unanswered. But this one stand outs from the herd of bright green elephants playing trombones and wearing odd hats.
WHAT. THE. FUCK. WAS. PHIL. THERE. FOR? I mean, was he the representation of shit going bad? Was he just a dude that wandered the ship? o_O
Ok this was all the way back from page 2, and after watching this whole LP, I have to stick to my initial reaction after watching only the first set.
What. The. Fuck.
The 'parallel' story with the guy in the woods went fucking nowhere, while in the meantime the modern story went completely off the rails, crashed into the station, and destroyed the entire surrounding city. With toxic chemicals, or something.
EDIT:
Actually, you know what? I think Klyka said it best.
Pretty much. Like everything else Beardman deals with in the present, you have to think in abstractions before any of it starts to make sense. Phil made appearances whenever something really big was happening that directly tied into the fate of the ship: he appeared when the XO gave the message to the captain, he was outside the reactor around when the engineer told the captain off, and he was at the end of the infirmary section when everything went straight to hell.
Basically he wasn't any one guy so much as the sum total of everything that went seriously wrong.
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I have some theories that thinly explain what might have happened with the plot:
Chronos is the iceberg, sealed within as a punishment for being a loser titan from that war between them and the Greek Gods. Maybe.
He is not to blame for the accident but rather the sins of the crew and their constant incompitence/selfishness. Human nature became manifest as the "Phil" creature stalking the ship, and after the shit went down with the three big characters and the iceberg, a time bubble sealed the whole mess up and everyone left within. Chronos was freed by accident and stuck in the bubble created by the crew.
Beardman goes to rendevous with the ship on scheduale only to be killed by the initial ice breaking under his sled. His soul is yanked into the ship, becomes Chronos's avatar, gains super powers, and begins to free the ship and himself.
He eventually suceeds along lines similar to Danko and his heroic trek through the swamp, although why that story had any real relevance beyond metaphor is beyond me. He uses his accumulated powers to reverse the events of the ship hitting Chronos's prison and setting things back to normal. Beardman is then ressurected through time and is rescued from death by the crew and the captain.
And they all live happily ever after.
o_O
I think.
It's too late for this goddamn shit. :?
I'm going to bed, Good LP regardless of fucked up story Helloween. I especially enjoyed the bit with the Necronomicon. Delightful little book that is. :P
I patiently await the return of Bruce and more Allllllien murderings in AVP.
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Also, the captain got hurt when the glass broke in his face, not by being shot.
edit: Wait, isn't Beard Man only there because the ship broke down. So if the ship didn't break down, why is he still there?
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Yeah. I'll work on that soon...ish.
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Ah, I see. Didn't notice that at first about the glass.
Beardman was supposed to be picked up by the ship, according to the very first note he gets. Like I said earlier, it's as if in the real world, the ship never broke down, but when he gets there he's in some alternate history where the reactor melted down and the ship is left derelict.
Corehealer: Amazingly, that's one of the less confusing explanations I've heard for why Chronos is there. The more complicated ones wind up being some variant of "no Beardman, you are the time gods." As for the story, I think that's more a parallel with the captain's state of mind. Both start out trying to lead their people to safety, only to initially fail and have their people turn on them. Danko's act of desperation ultimately saves his group, and the captain attempts something similar to win back his crew's loyalty; whether he even gets to that point depends on his engineer or the XO showing a bit of compassion when he needs it most.
That's the only way I can figure it fits, although I'm sure I'm missing something. The whole thing feels like some crazy fever dream somebody thought up after trying to speedrun Pathologic on acid "for fun."
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My interpretation in order of complexity from the most straightforward to least:
The ship broke due to hitting an iceberg, was repaired and sailed off. This is the story without any strange stuff.
The ship broke, but the crewmen's mistakes were fixed back in time, which led to the first iteration of this story.
The ship broke due to the manifestation of the evil actions and minds of the crew. As it manifested as ice (and as they were the cause) they too were ice demons. The actions of the player show how small compassion and courage in face of adversity can cause great change. There is no real ending as to whether the ship was left derelict or was saved, that's for the player to decide - the game explored both versions.
The last explanation is the most abstract, as is the character of the last boss. The heat, red and radiation in general were a representation of the captain's heart and goodwill towards his ship, helping you help the ship (as opposed by blue, cold and ice.)
In the end it was the captain's heart that stopped the senior crew from escaping, but by then the story is rather more metaphorical than in the beginning anyway. The reactor core is the symbol for the heart obviously, it was repaired and in the end saved them all. What I'm missing is what the world chained in ice represents. By my explanation then it would be the totality of their failures, how there is nothing left when all of them get it wrong. But I think the explanation to that lies in the storybook snippets, can anyone recall what they faced in the forest when everything was at its darkest?
Chronos was cool. At first I sort of thought he showed up because Beardman was causing time shenanigans and he was like "cut that shit out," but then he helps you out after you... collect enough red glowy things? I dunno.
If Beardman's trek throughout the whole fucking ship was in soul-form, I guess that makes all the visions and demons and everything make more sense. They were all the lost, trapped souls of the sailors I guess. Though then this gives rise to the question of how they were in the past when the ship was fucked up. Maybe they were crewmen who had given up hope and gone mad, and whose souls eventually became the monsters in the present, so you see them as monsters since you are all metaphorical when you are a soul I guess.
In the battle, if you look at beardman's fingertips, they glow red when you get a kill, and blue when Chronos gets a kill. Presumably, you had to beat Chronos at killing mans to prove that you were worthy to turn back time.
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ahhh that actually makes a lot of sense.
And then you can be Phil (Death?) and change things at the crash and then that other guy and change things at the crash so the ship doesn't explode.
I kind of took the whole game as "Everybody died. Including you. And to save yourself, you have to save everybody." And it's just some sort of crazy chain reaction deal where if the ship wasn't as fucked as it was, the people would have lived, and they would have caught Beardman, like at the ending, before he fell to his death at the start of the game.
But I honestly haven't, nor can I, think on it too much to reason it out. That's....just what I'm going to go with and move on. Somebody probably said what I did, or something even better, but I just finished watching the last two sets since I got behind on my LPs, took about five minutes to go "What the hell" and started posting after reading the last couple of posts.
Anyways, that was great fun anyways, as there were plenty of entertaining bits throughout. Thanks as always for playing the game, Hell, and I look forward to the next LP in which the story will assuredly make more sense.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fBzx-6OWss
Helloween did another game from my childhood as one of his Favourite games. This is good as I am going home from holiday today and I'm bummed out a bit. Thanks for cheering me up Hello.
I'll say it straight. This game has the best story of any videogame ever made. It also requires more brains
than the average gamer has. Honestly I'm disappointed at all the WTFs here when if you actually took the time to THINK, the story begins to come together. You have to pay very close attention to everything that happens especially toward the end.
The game is trying to make a commentary about the problems of humanity and the world. This is also evident when at one point there is a globe trapped in icy chains. It's important to note that this occurs right after the prison scene where you see the world through the perspective of your enemies. The end of this scene has you entering the mind of the guy who is hitting the pan on the floor. You then see the world being formed as we know it today. The events on the North Wind are perhaps meant to mirror the problems of the real world.
The most central theme of the game is the inability of people to understand each other and consequently close their mind to others. You can see this almost everywhere, from the story of Danko, to the infighting between the Captain, the executive officer, the security officer, and the engineer, to the way that each enemy is literally locked inside their mind with a prison of their own doing. Every problem in the game arises from the close mindedness of each character, their inability to understand and accept what others think.
A good analysis of the story was done by someone on another forum. I'll repost it here so hopefully more attention comes to this game.
No one was saying it was a bad game. It's just that it purposely used metaphor and imagery in place of concrete facts.
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Yeah. Makes sense when you look at all that in detail after the fact. But while playing the game? Fuck no. Too much assumption rather than fact.
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I agree. There are some plot things that can be left ambiguous or presented in such a way as to allow the player to imagine cool ways that the plot fits together behinds the scenes, but this game just had waaaaaay to much artsy fartsy nonsense without too much context or coherent explanations. It was just like, hey, we'll end the game by dumping biblical passages and a Greek Titan on their ass, without any explanation whatsoever.
What kills me is the titan actively sabotages the whole thing. There are any number of interpretations as for what's happening - Alex literally traveling through a broken ship and saving lives, the ship as some kind of purgatory, the Cold as something sentient that preserved the tragedy, Alex having some kind of incredibly fucked-up epiphany - but they all run with the theme of "things got so bad on the ship that something noticed, and now you're caught in the middle. Survive and save as many as you can, and see if you can't learn something from this mess."
With a little more care in establishing the otherworldly setting - maybe giving the player more concrete objectives and ironing out the timeline hiccups - I think it could have well established that you didn't really need to know why this was happening. The important part is discovering just how little needed to be done, at just the right moment, to save the ship. Or... something. I dunno, but Chronos puts an axe to the thing. "Oh, it's just the god of time acting up again. Let's have a smite-off!"
They also could've made the captain a little less obviously loopy. I mean, if the XO wasn't so opportunistic and petty I would've been perfectly fine with him relieving the captain of his command. I'm comfortable saying that a guy who sails by gut intuition and ignores onboard indicators should not be put in charge of a nuclear anything.
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First, I'm wondering how many here actually played the game and completed it. A lot of opinions here seem to be second hand. Getting your opinions from the video isn't the same as actually playing the game itself. It's no substitute for a real playthrough, and especially in this game where you have to pay attention to everything that goes on and more importantly what it means in the greater context of the story
The captain wasn't really that loopy, at least no more so than anyone else in the game. Every character in the game is flawed so it makes sense. Remember what the captain says "sail long enough with the ship and it becomes a part of you." The captain knows if the ship returns it will be decommissioned, which is his worst fear. He wants to prove the ship's capability by persevering and completing the mission.
The very last level of the game, the one where you have to choose which of the three characters minds to go into, is where you really see the essence of each character. In particular, take a look at the chessboard beneath the XO, the arrangement of the chairs and what they are made of on the security officers table, and the objects and cage around the engineer. Remember that symbolism is everything in this game, and in this game more so than many others, lots of detail will be missed by only spectating via a video.
I'll say straight out that this game was never designed to be everyone's cup of tea. It does veer towards the artsy side. Originality is so rare these days though that I think the pros far exceed the shortcomings of this game.
If an explanation was given then the entire thing would have been ruined. The entire point was that you were supposed to think what it meant and it wasn't handed to you on a silver platter. I haven't a seen a game so deep in symbolism since Planescape Torment. Chronos makes sense in the context of the rest of the story. The Titan doesn't sabotage anything. He's the explanation for what gives the protagonist the ability to change time throughout the game and make the critical decision at the very end.
The whole thing is pretty much like those Russian independent films of the 70s put into the form of a game, reminds me a lot of STALKER(movie which the STALKER game was loosely based off, you should watch it if you completed the game since it actually makes a lot more sense)