Home
Creators
Search Recent Random
Posts
Search DMs Popular Hash Lookup Tags Random
Importer
Import FAQ
Register Favorites Keys Review DMs Logout
Community
Telegram ThePornDude
Home Creators Posts Import Register Favorites Logout

Early Access: Protagony: Gordon (rough cut) (Patreon)

Published:
2026-01-22 23:32:16
Imported:
2026-01

Videos

  • 601464754.mp4

Downloads

Content

We have an edit! Co-edited with Marceline of Mars in Theory. Still needs a credits sequence before submitting for sponsors, but here it is for y'all! Script was on the shelf for... two years? Criminy.

Feels good to make something again.

Files

Comments

Crimson Claw

We heard it here first! Ian thinks The Sims is pretentious for letting them poop! /jk

Bobby Castleberry

I love your analysis of things so much. This made my day, thank you.

FredCham

I love those kind of video, you are the goat of game critic. And it's so good for the timing as I have just purchase a second hand MetaQuest2 two weeks ago, and play half life Alyx and Half Life 2 vr mod (but I knew HL2 very well). So to make a comparaison with Gordon, Alyx is not a silent protagonist in HLA, but the point about space and time is really interesting in this game : VR levels are very small, for technical purpose. But also vr makes everything look big and reel so it's ok. In HL2, we have long corridors suggesting an expanded city. In Alyx, levels are made in a dark souls way, like a snail shell, you do a lot of travel in a small space made to feel like a bigger space. You have the feeling to travel a big long corridor of the city but you do that by doing spirals in tiny levels. And Alyx talks, and so you feel like you travel in a 1/1 seconds with her. The journey of Alyx is smaller that the journey of Gordon in HL2, but in some way it feel longer, because we do it on foot and with more obstacle every meters. Also about the long take aspect, in the HL univers, often the only real cuts are after a big explosion and I find that funny as a video editor. This subject makes me think about how when I did a big hike in a region of france with ruins of castle in montains (like some kind of ubisoft-tower to visit), the only game I could think of was Skyrim. No other open world did the equation space/time as right as Skyrim. Bigger open world seems too easy to traverse. Death Stranding do a lot of good traversal mecanic, but the space is too small. Skyrim is the only game I played where the space is big enough to make you feel you walk the big distance suggested by the story in a way not insufferable for a gamer's time. (with a special mention to Ancestors : humankind odyssey, because the traversal mecanics matches perfectly the scale of the map, but I dont have a real life prehistoric monkey experience to compare).

cr0nes

Fantastic vid!

Dosbilliam

You also call them Warriors of Light considering the sheer number of *stoic nod* you see playing through FFXIV. :P

Mike Kachur

Can't wait until 2029 for the next episode! (Edit: I understand you've been going through a lot and I don't mind at all, it happens. I just find it kinda funny that each Protagony episode is released almost exactly 3 years apart.)

Errorname

I have my doubts that Gordon and Alyx specifically have a conversation in the offpage. Gordon's always read to me like him being an avatar for the player is on some level, diagetic, like he used to be a person who talked and ate and slept, but then the game starts and something else takes over, which is it's own flavour of metatextual weirdness. That aside, this is a very trenchant video. Well-observed and very applicable.

Samus Aran

Video game spaces are inherently unrealistic due to the constraints of level design. Devs have limited time and resources in which to craft environments, and those environments need to keep players engaged with well-paced challenges, points of interest, and navigational aides. In contrast, spaces in live action movies and TV shows are actual spaces that exist, even real cities and buildings and forests. So even in a "grounded" game like Half-Life, the environments you're traversing are very video gamey and can be treated as simplified representations of larger and more complex spaces.

Luke Beeman

This got me thinking about some of the more unique silent protagonists from games I’ve played. There’s Lea from CrossCode, who’d be categorized as a Knight (canonically mute) but in stark contrast to the actual Knight, is actually very expressive and actively frustrated by her inability to properly communicate. And then there’s Kris from DELTARUNE, who’d be categorized as a Link (speaks but the player can’t hear), only the game doubles down by obfuscating their actual facial expressions and body language from the player, and then deliberately draws attention to that obfuscation to unsettling effect.

Zoe Storm

This is very good.

PLM

Artyom (from the Metro series) is a Link during gameplay, but he monologues during loading screens -- he literally only speaks "between the edits." In the Mario & Luigi series, the brothers are Links but instead of silence their dialogue is expressed as faux-Italian gibberish. Chell (from the Portal series) is a Knight, but the reason she's mute has changed between games: in Portal 1 she refuses to speak, but in Portal 2 she's incapable of speech.

PLM

I loved the preview you posted in August, and this finished version is exactly what I hoped it would be! Suspension of disbelief is a fascinating thing, especially when it seems to play by different rules in different mediums. Can't wait for this to hit YouTube so I can share it with a few friends.

Josh Grey

Love the video, love the conclusion. Love the thesis and the way it was communicated.

David Schwab

The subtle nod to Brian David Gilbert's Unraveled series (and his overanalyzing video games meltdowns) at 10:15 triggered an involuntary pointing Leonardo DiCaprio response from me.

Beetle

Congrats! I watched a few of your Protagony videos after bingeing The Alt-Right Playbook. Sometimes I still rewatch that playlist, because understanding those people makes me feel a little better, even though I don't take action as much as I'd like to. You're a good video essayist, so it's high time I finally subbed to the Patreon. Can't wait to watch this!