ROSS’S GAME DUNGEON: A NEW BEGINNING

"Captain Planet Midlife Crisis" may be my new favourite award you gave in a Game Dungeon so far.

Enviromentalism is a theme that's very easy to screw up the execution, and to makes matters worse this game is also about time travel, which is ANOTHER theme that can be screwed up easily by inexperienced writers.

A movie-based game is next? Hmmmm... Don't know any other obscure PC game that's based on a movie besides Pumpkinhead, but knowing Ross it will obviously surprise me...

...unless he's going to do a episode on The Dig. It tecnically counts since it WAS supposed to be a movie at one point, but they decided to make it a game instead because the budget wasn't favorable. But The Dig isn't that obscure, so I have no clue.

Ross, the 1 in 6 deaths stat is kind of misleading, which if you read the article you should know. The article says that one in six deaths can be linked to pollution. LINKED. NOT CAUSED BY. LINKED. Meaning there are other factors—since 92% of those deaths happen in poor countries, another factor leading to those deaths is probably poverty. And no, it’s not like Russian roulette, because even in places where those deaths are concentrated, it mainly effects small children and the elderly. Not to mention that the same pollution that is causing climate change is probably contributing to these deaths, so it really doesn’t make any sense to treat them as separate issues, they are more like the short term and long term effects of air pollution.

I know you're trying to keep this videos short(ish), and you had trouble meeting deadlines and all... but I kinda wish you'd developed more on the unrealistic parts of the game and what a more realistic version would look like.

I think a lot of people who see the video would think "No, this is perfectly realistic, corporations do evil things like this all the time", which is kind of true but also ignoring a lot of nuance and complexity in what corporations can, can't and won't do.

In particular, the story revolves around this magic alga that would somehow replace both petroleum and nuclear energy (presumably without just moving the problem around like hydrogen or or real life biofuels). The thing is, we have a ridiculously hard time moving past petrol and nuclear *because* there is no viable alternative to them. We're not putting these billions of dollars into fusion power research for fun. If we did have an ecological silver bullet energy (just for fun, let's call it "Argent energy"), then no amount of patent suppression, corporate corruption and sabotage would keep it from being released. The money oil companies could make by suppressing Argent energy would just be massively outweighed by the money investors could make by patenting it and selling it worldwide.

(although now that I think about it, from what the episode shows us the game doesn't seem to say that the alga is ready for commercialization or even close, just that people are working on it; some of the shenanigans do make some sense if we assume the technology is still undeveloped, promising enough to warrant suppression by oil companies, but not promising enough that it would attract tons of investors and have backups everywhere; but then there's the question of why future people are even interested in this alga if they never use it in the future, and it was sabotaged before it could get any traction)

Anyway, my point is I would have loved to hear you talk more about this stuff. Cynical rants about politics and economy are one of the reasons I love your channel

Yeah, nothing except the hairstyles and anti-nuclear attitudes belong to 1982... Everything else is much more recent. That makes this a totally nonsensical game to me, and I would not be able to enjoy it.

FYI, since 1987 we have had nuclear reactor designs that were physically incapable of meltdown, even if you were trying to force a meltdown.

The animation used seems familiar.

Yeah, nothing except the hairstyles and anti-nuclear attitudes belong to 1982...

I would argue that even that is more recent. Especially in Germany. Atomic energy was always considered the future energy by many nations. Three Mile Island and Chernobyl never changed it. Well, much. TMI was largely without consequences, and Chernobyl... Well, maybe the west didn't believe in the soviet technology, I don't know (which would be wrong BTW, the technology had nothing to do with what happened there, but it's a long story). Also, Chernobyl happened after the 1982.

But it is the recent years, when we see the rise of various eco-freaks. Greenpeace, global warming hype, anti-atomic movement - all that. My theory is, that it started after the fall of the soviet union, when the leftist propaganda all over the world suddenly needed the new ideology. Before that it was the capitalists oppressing the worker class. Now it's the capitalists oppressing the environment. They all started to tell us what sinners we are for not loving the nature like they do. I hope they all die some day, like the communism did. Preferably, without rendering 200 million people to a complete misery, like the communism did. Atomic energy in particular only recently become the target of eco-biggotry. Specifically, after the fukushima disaster. Which happened in 2011. And this game was released in 2012. Hm, do I smell a political message here?

Now to the technical part. First of all: reactor meltdown is not the same as atomic explosion. People rarely understand that. Meltdown actually has nothing to do with explosions at all. It is, as the name suggests, a meltdown: part of the reactor melts down. Period. There was indeed an explosion in Chernobyl, but it had nothing to do with the meltdown or atomic fuel, and more to do with zirconium control rods and water dissipating into hydrogen and oxygen. Which leads us to second: the biggest problem with such a disaster is not an explosion, but the pollution. Usual atomic reactor has a fuel capacity of 50-100 metric tons of uranium. That is A LOT. If you throw it in the atmosphere (like in Chernobyl), or dump it in the ocean (like in fukushima), you'll get a fucking problem. But beats me how such a thing can cause a rainforest fire. Or global warming. Or whatever.

And finally, pollution and radioactive waste. And that's why I particularly hate eco-freaks. Atomic power plants do not increase pollution, they decrease it! You can live 100 meters away from an atomic plant and be okay and healthy. Have you ever seen a coal power plant? It's a fucking death zone. You better not approach it closer than 50 km. But what about radioactive waste? Surely the disposal sites are the hellholes of earth? Well, that is partially true. You sure can't make the dumps clean. But here's the fun fact, which most people don't think about for some reason: atomic plants don't produce waste out of thin air. They produce it from fuel, which is as much radioactive as the waste. And which was also not produced out of thin air by the evil capitalists. It was mined from the earth. So atomic plants do not increase the amount of radioactive materials on the planet. If anything, they decrease it. So we take the radioactive materials from all over the earth, and dump it inside one well-equipped facility (or not so well-equipped, if we're talking about the Chelyabinsk dump site, but this is again, another story). Now tell me it's a bad thing.

I can understand that maybe the atomic energy is not the best, but in absence of the magical energy algae, that's what we got to use.

If you take into account modern Thorium reactor designs, the only waste that can be produced from the impossible-to-meltdown reactor, decays to background levels of radiation in 12 years.

I have finally finished moving into my new apartment. Just need some settling-in time and then it's back to the grindstone again. Subtitles are delayed but they are coming.

Since I watched this review there was something about Fay that was bothering me. Then I decided to watch the review again and I noticed two things: 1 - Apparently Fay has a bad case of Lordosis; 2 - Fay looks like Miss Frizzle from Magic School Bus.

And finally, pollution and radioactive waste. And that's why I particularly hate eco-freaks. Atomic power plants do not increase pollution, they decrease it! You can live 100 meters away from an atomic plant and be okay and healthy. Have you ever seen a coal power plant? It's a fucking death zone. You better not approach it closer than 50 km. But what about radioactive waste? Surely the disposal sites are the hellholes of earth? Well, that is partially true. You sure can't make the dumps clean. But here's the fun fact, which most people don't think about for some reason: atomic plants don't produce waste out of thin air. They produce it from fuel, which is as much radioactive as the waste. And which was also not produced out of thin air by the evil capitalists. It was mined from the earth. So atomic plants do not increase the amount of radioactive materials on the planet. If anything, they decrease it. So we take the radioactive materials from all over the earth, and dump it inside one well-equipped facility (or not so well-equipped, if we're talking about the Chelyabinsk dump site, but this is again, another story). Now tell me it's a bad thing.

Interesting bit of trivia here, and it sums up my feelings towards this game message. It smells a lot like anti-nuclear propaganda, which is not surprising considering this game is German, and according to some comments I saw on Youtube about this review, this negativity towards nuclear power seems to be common in Europe.

I can understand that maybe the atomic energy is not the best, but in absence of the magical energy algae, that's what we got to use.

Oh yeah, here's another problem that I have with this game, they offer a FICTIONAL solution to a "REAL" problem. If this was some kind of fantasy/sci-fi alternate universe where BOTH elements were ficticional to create a metaphor, I could get that behind. There's still general execution, but that's another story...

I could go on about many things wrong in enviromentalistic plots of any kind, but this video put it in sarcastically better words:

_rRTHhGVUHg

The music at 34:34 reminds me of the into to "Lost Painting" from the Symphony of the Night soundtrack.

The music at around 34:30 sounds similar to Pennywise's theme from the 90s It miniseries to me.

SPOILER

The scene where Stan committed suicide has a good quick example of it: 

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       I just had a couple points about the value of this game and how beautiful it actually is. I think the use of time travel actually betrays some creative ideas about climate change, more than what the fantasy-like elements of the game would lead you to believe.

Firstly, I don't think we should judge the game based on its educational value. The game seems to be aimed at a primarily German but also international audience that already understands the nuances of climate change. The plot elements don’t need to make real-world or educational sense because the game isn't trying to educate their already literate players. The fantastic aspects like the solar flare and magical continent-destroying nuclear reactors actually improve the game by contributing to a surreal atmosphere, where things seem to work as they do in the real world but don't. Yes, it is a little illogical but I don’t think that ruins the game, see Star Trek’s inconsistent yet thought-provoking Prime Directive. The real-but-not-realness of the game actually makes the game more interesting to me than if it were just an accurate portrayal of climate change.

        The bigger value of the game is in reminding the player that their actions in the real world have consequences. The beautiful bit is how it does that through the medium of time travel. People can understand abstracts like how consumerism contributes to climate change but they don’t *change*. By travelling through the future, the game makes climate change more viscerally meaningful by showing an abandoned San Francisco, a flooded London, a burning Sydney. Yes, it is a little dramatic, but the game should be, it means for us to take our time now on Earth seriously.

         What’s iconic is how the time travelers travel *back* through time. It's telling that the future humans with all their technology can't stop the Mobius loop of ice-cap loss and sea level rise; falling albedo and rising temperatures. The future humans are reliant on primitive humans from the 1970's because by 2500 AD, it’s far too late to save the ice caps and stop albedo induced climate change. It reminds us that we can slow the speeding snowball of climate change more than anyone in the future will be able to.

         Even the fact that the time travelers cyclically fail and come back again and again has meaning. No matter what we do now, the snowball of climate change has already gotten too big. The time travelers fail again and again to stop climate change because they can't stop it. Even by the 1970’s it was too late to reverse climate change in its entirety.

         The game isn’t without its flaws, but the combination of engaging fantasy, imaginative use of time travel, and underlying themes about climate change serve as a powerful reminder of how devastating the effects of climate change may be for humanity’s future. Today it is far too late to stop climate change from having *some* impact, but just as generations of time travelers do in the game, so too must we fight valiantly to stop what cannot be stopped.

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I’m not sure what inspired me to write this up, but I totally got what Ross was saying when he gave the game the “Somebody Cared” award. It reminds me of other series like RWBY where the content leaves you feeling like there were some truly superb ideas below the surface, just not *quite* there. Overall, I liked the game and its unique ideas, I just find it tragic the execution wasn’t there to make it good enough for people to enjoy it.