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New video - The Isle video essay (Patreon)

Published:
2021-05-16 22:24:22
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

Good evening folks. So the rendering took much of the weekend, with quite a number of failed files at the end of it. But I think I've got a complete version if you wanted to have a look at it - https://youtu.be/L0Vs_9hFAzY 

Once again, thank you for your patience!

Feedback is very much appreciated. Be it good or bad. It'll better help me adjust content in the future. 

The purpose of this video is purely to talk about some of the interesting design choices being made with The Isle, along with some of its competitors. Which all seem to focus on playing as dinosaurs in a very classic, non-basebuildy survival way.

But similarly, how interesting it is in the context of the wider survival market, which typically replicate many of the elements that have come before in other games (most notably Minecraft and DayZ due to their massive player bases), without really experimenting with them. Meaning that The Isle didn't need to do a lot in order to find fresh territory in the genre.

Also, let me know if you think any other major survival game influences should be added to that bubble map. I added as many as I could before it seemed impractical. But naturally there may be others with a sway you might be able to see clearer? It shouldn't be too difficult to add others.

I very much hope you like it though. Looking forward to hearing your collective thoughts.

Files

Comments

Tom

Awesome! I shall watch in the morning, get some sleep mate!

Joshua Bradbury

Great video! Love your video essay work, keep it up :)

Ellie

Really quite enjoyed that. I would just say that in areas that you pointed audio (12:00-15:00) it was quite difficult to hear the games audio, might be my shitty speakers. And I did get a bit distracted by the youtube video links on the side at 3:00 and 15:20, maybe blur them, put your bullshitteries there or joke videos. Other than that it was enjoyable and quite an interesting point of view

EchoSerenity

Well done Soviet! Watching it now.

PizzaDiPasta123

Very nice. I like it. And I like how the ending turned out. Good job :)

MrFindus

I enjoyed it. In part because unlike the Day Z mod I actually play The Isle from time to time. The doctor and nurse I’m on nightshift with thought it was interesting and informative too. So that’s 3 positive reactions here.(unfortunately for the price of one, unless they subscribe later)

Stephanie

Great video - you make some excellent points/arguments that I've never really considered (to be fair, I don't actually think about games beyond 'am I having fun?').

Justin Cox

Throwing shade at EFT? That's a paddlin'! In all seriousness, great video. Entertaining, informative, and soothing to listen to and watch. My only nitpick, and it is a nitpick, was that I felt the scene with the listening to the night sky was about twice as long as it should have been (it felt empty after a few seconds, unless that was the point).

DukeShank

Can’t wait for my work to get over so that I can watch this!

ac502

Just finished watching the video. Very interesting, especially as someone who really has avoid the games you talk about both in this video and the previous essays. You actually got me interested in actually getting The Isle to give it a try, till I remembered the warning at the start of the video. The only specific comment I have is that around the 40:45 minute mark, the voice audio quality changes. To me it gets a little bit worse, but I personally don't suggest re-recording it or anything, just something that jumped out. As someone who has done scrum/sprint retrospectives, it just seems like something to bring up to look out for in the future, and not something to delay a release.

WarsawEagle

Good job dude. Take a breather, this w as a big one

Jason

Very well executed, no lulls in 45 min. But I preferred your shorter videos that were grouped together (dayz ones). They had more satisfying narratives

Mr_Freem4n

This definitely a very interesting watch, and the 2nd Twist is something I that expected to be in the game buy definitely not being the sole thing for the survival of carnivores. It's definitely not something we've seen before and I think you're really giving credit where it's due. It's a really interesting game and I'm high likely going to try it out. Thanks for creating another masterpiece Womble!

Vignesh B

And finally it is complete ! Take a big break Soviet. Loved the video. Always good to see a deep dive on new things.

JPJones

As always, your narration and video editing are top notch! I could swim in your voice all day and never get tired (no homo). More please! This next bit is going to be harsh, but hopefully not mean. For video essays, while strong visuals and a naturally wonderful narrating voice help, success is measured more in skills as a writer rather than overall aural and visual representation. For scripts of this length, it is doubly important to avoid repetition and unnecessary supposition. As an example of the former, I counted 8 uses of the word “interesting”, which in most cases also qualified as examples of the latter as well. To clarify what I mean by supposition,“ They did something interesting.” is a relatively empty statement of opinion that can be removed not only to reduce essay length, but also to encourage the writer to show that the subject is interesting using strong statements of fact. Read that paragraph again, but skip the first sentence to see an example. The reader now decides if these statements are harsh, mean, interesting, or any other sentiment, not the writer. That determination helps to keep the reader actively engaged rather than feeling like a passenger who’s just along for the ride. A parallel could be drawn between this type of writing and open world survival games, but I digress. While your closing statement is strong on its own, it felt detached from the short sequence leading up to it, which took away from the punch I think it was meant to have. The real conclusion starts with the segment from 37:54-40:44, which flows better when allowed to build straight into the proper crescendo beginning at 43:03. The stand-alone segment from 40:44-43:03 can be slotted in intact at 0:30 to add strength and a solid problem statement to your intro. I did a few re-watches, skipping around to see how that segment fits in different places. By plugging it in at 0:30 just after the whimsical intro sequence, it immediately pulled me in and set a proper tone for the rest of the essay with the added bonus that it has Cy in it for some immediate product recognition for your Bullshitery audience. Bottom line, though, is that you made your point and made it well. If even one game dev picks up this idea after seeing this video and comes up with a way to implement the Teutonic RP rules programmatically, I would call it a win. I wouldn’t even care if we had to be bugs.

GumballBob

Hi Soviet there are 2 points I want to highlight. 1. Are you familiar with Youtube timestamps? I know you never need them for the bullshitery format, but it's really handy for video essays, because video essay are generally divided into chapters, it really helps to see exactly where the chapters are instead of going through the video again. 2. Not to jab at your sense of humour but I think you should watch out for "humouring yourself too much". I know it's haha funny dino face is funny but spending 30s+ giggling at dino face is a bit distracting.

Azuim

I know you reworked the conclusion a few times but I feel like it was jumping a bit back and forth. Starting at 38:58 it's "I've played this before" (negative) until 40:03 where it's "This is what The Isle is doing well" (positive) and then at 40:45 you go back to "I've played this before" (negative) and then finish at 43:07 with "This is what The Isle is doing well" (positive). I think it might be more effective if you swap it around and have both the "I've played this before" parts first and then both the "This is what The Isle is doing well" parts to finish. The suggestion JPJones made might also be a solution. A comment that has been common when you've had this discussion on stream and that I think you might see on this video is, "Escape From Tarkov is NOTHING like DayZ!!! It's so much better because of [insert improved feature]" or "I've played Valheim for 800 hours and enjoyed it a lot, it's a really good game and more detailed than Minecraft". While this is not the argument you are making, that the games are bad or that they aren't refined in any way, I think people might make these comments because they feel like they have to defend the game they like. Now it's definitely not needed for the argument you are making, it's just if you want to stop those comments. I went back and listened to the discussion you had with Social and Digi when you were doing some scenes in The Isle (https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1012262023 - discussion starts at about 1:19:30). I think you said it quite well when Digi made the point that the games add refinement/improvements, "I'm tired of paying £39.99 for refinements". Might be an idea to have a listen to the discussion to see if there are any more things you want to add.

Bob

Great video Womble, I really enjoyed it and I thought it was well explained. The one QA issue I noticed was at 17:24 when the TRex starts talking. It's hard to explain, but if you're wearing headphones the first few seconds of audio is like the voice is in your head ("Hi, I'm a Tyranno-"). Then there are a few moments which are more echoey, like the voice is in a room with you ("-saurus rex"). Then it's in your head again ("I have really big "), and then "teeth" sounds like sound in a room again.

Cuzed

I really love your video essay's. I love how you take a Topic that I love (Videogames) and talk about it in a way that feels educational yet equally entertaining. The way you display and offer information in your video just kind of drags me in. I'll sit here watching the first 3 minutes and the feeling starts to seep in that the world slows down a bit, my mind relaxes and the other things my head was busy with start to lose focus until I forget they were there. It is REALLY rare in my daily life where I'm just getting hurled at with digital media full of people talking about things that I realize that the character of the game I've been playing had been running against a wall for the past 30 minutes for I just lost myself in your video essay. The statement "maybe don't buy The Isle" had me expecting a really shitty game with a more involuntary feature like a mechanic the devs intended to do something which the community repurposed to do something drastically different though. And the music that started at 10:15 in the video with its repeating "urgh" sound really distracted me to a point where I didn't listen to you anymore and just focused on that "urgh" until I caught myself doing that and shook it off. I'm sorry if this reads weird. I'm lacking practice in expressing myselfe in english and i'm not much of an author anyway.

Paweł Wiśniewski

It's not boring, but it's kinda slow. Not a big deal as it's about a genre of slower games for patient people. It definitely made me want to play the Isle or tbh it's better successor( if and when it ever gets made), that probably means something even if the video could be edited and narrated a bit more tightly for my taste.

Pan Piernis

Great video the only thing I have the problem is that at the end the pause sometimes is too long? I don't know. Overall I enjoyed it greatly and it was good to hear about games I will never have a chance to play as a console player.

ApolloRoad

It's good Womble, quite engaging and everything is laid out with clarity. I bet the final bit was cathartic to make

Jords Daddy

Very good video Soviet! Interesting to see your take on the survival genre and also taught me a whole lot about it all. I don't know how much influence you've taken but there was a few things that sounded similar to what IGP (I saw you watched his vid on the isle) so interested to see if he reaches out to you to chat about it. Definitely am looking forward to seeing more of these side-projects come to full completion! Hopefully a lot less painful than this one -_- Enjoy your time off, hope the weather is good for fishing :)

Oxy Moron

The video was so engaging. The structure, the explainations, details, comparisons, gameplay, humour, knowlegde.. everything was there. A great video essay, and one can see just how much work was put into it.

CharlieMidnight

Good stuff that video. Minute 26:00 was my favourite part. I found that Kenshi was missing in the survival mentions though but maybe it isn't big enough. It's quite unique though, as far as survival games go.