An Uncanny Reality

If you just haven't had enough of me talking about these two games, I'll be releasing a full-length director's commentary on this video for patrons! EVEN MORE DISCOMFORT.

Me: FMV. Full Motion Video. My brain: Fallout Mew Vegas

One unsettling thing you didn’t mention about that Maria “jump-scare” scene is that the game purposefully forgoes the standard shot/reverse-shot format that lets viewers know characters are facing each other when talking...instead, both characters are facing left during their individual shots, yet another way the game seeks to unsettle its players by eschewing the ways in which we expect stories to ground us in a firm sense of reality.

The fact that we can keep talking about SH2 for almost 20 years is amazing.

Everytime Maria says "see? I'm real" I get chills down my spine.

When you talked about the part in Devotion where the father is going through the motions while his daughter lies sick in bed and then you very subtly interspersed SH2 footage from when James was watching Mary die?! I SAW THAT SHIT, 10/10

"honey it's 8 am time to rewatch jacob geller's uncanny reality video essay again" "yes dear"

This video certainly helped explain just how much of a shame taking down Devotion was. One can only hope it persists in data and memory despite all that has been done to it before.

People complain so much about the stilted voice acting in SH2, and what I think they forget is the vocal tones the designers wanted were as tightly controlled as the digital art. They wanted odd pacing on intonations, they insisted on some of the off-beat deliveries. What that leaves us with as an end product is a game that, from the very first moments, unsettles us, disorients us. It's not just the FMV work, though that's stellar for the time. It's the fact that anyone and anything in James' version of Silent Hill is not quite okay. You're absolutely right in that the FMV work, the way they used character animation and reflections, makes us uncomfortable. But so does the voicing. It all contributes to something slightly skin-crawling...and that's why people still talk about it today.

I'm really glad you talked about Devotion. As a taiwanese it saddens me that chinese government can just censor masterpieces like this. Apart from what you've mentioned, Devotion is also a reflection of reality. It highlights how a family like this can be torn apart, it shows how the pressure and expectations a father like this can break a child. It also shines a light on these cult like practices that is practiced even to this day. On top of that, the real life footage that the father always watched is actually a real TV show that existed back in the day. The game intersects with reality very well!

that moment when you and Maria said "Anyway!" at the same time was... UNCANNY

Jacob's sense of aesthetics is what always makes me excited to watch his videos.

The End of Evangelion sort of did the same thing as devotion, by showing live action scenes they showed how real Shinji's reality is for him compared to the dreamlike state that is human instrumentality.

The beauty with which you describe the most subtle yet most foundational pieces of a work of art always amazes me. Keep up the amazing work!

"We're still not perfect at creating digital expression" Shows clip from Polar Express that came out more than a decade ago

"And we're still in the woods." What a line.

Spoilers for devotion, clarifying the mysterious illness: She had panic attacks. In the game, there's a document from a doctor that's torn up. When you fix the x-ray image, it's normal, and the document is repaired. The doctors looking into her illness determined that it wasn't a physical problem, and referred her to the psychiatric department. But her father rejected that diagnosis (apparently there's still very strong stigma against mental illness in taiwan, and he thought that any mental illness would mean his daughter was crazy) so he sought second opinions and other treatments. Apparently he spent much of his money on that, and tried acupuncture and buying an incredibly expensive arowanna fish for good luck. He also started isolating her from anything that triggered her panic attacks, which makes those symptoms worse. Apparently the cult treatment seemingly worked better than anything else, but that was a coincidence. The illness is consistent with how panic attacks work throughout the game. It was never a physical illness

"See? I'm real." No you're NOT MARIA STOP

Me: waaaaaait.....didn’t I just read an article on polygon about this exact thing??? Jacob, I thought better of you than plagiari— Polygon: article by Jacob Geller Me: ...........I’ll excuse myself (Btw this topic was a great read/watch, I definitely think fmv has some properties that we take for granted in games)

I legit won't be surprised if this channel is at 1M by the end of 2020.