#noah caldwell-gervais

[nestgoblin]

#youtube #noah caldwell-gervais #does it again #name of the video is the lincoln highway: across america on the first transcontinental motor route

[plattenbau-persephone-praxis]

Hey, don't cry. Noah Caldwell-Gervais: The Real Life Landscapes of Fallout 3, Fallout 4 and Fallout 76 (3 hours, 19 minutes, 57 seconds), ok?

#personal #noah caldwell-gervais #fallout

[greatwyrmgold]

Ten years of Noah Caldwell-Gervais

It's remarkable how little the video essays of Noah Caldwell-Gervais have changed over the last decade.

Obviously, there have been some changes.

When I went on a(nother) NCG binge last month, the only difference that stood out to me immediately was the audio—both that NCG has upgraded his recording equipment and that early NCG videos included audio from the background game clips, sometimes loud enough to drown out his commentary. It's a weird choice that I assume he made because he didn't want to speak over dead air and couldn't find any royalty-free music that fit the tone well enough; I'm glad he changed his mind.

When I started looking, I saw other little things. The pace of his dictation has slowed (I want to say by about a quarter?), making his feature-length diatribes easier to parse. Counter to this, his older videos would often play whole cutscenes to display his point. (Not just once in a blue moon, like with that RE5 scene; sometimes twice in a row, like in the AVP vs. AVP vs. ACM video.) While Caldwell-Gervais didn't delve into "traditional gamer complaints" about DLC and "lazy devs" and such very often, their density has decreased over time, as has his willingness to give questionable design decisions a pass for good intentions. Early NCG was less likely to research games he couldn't personally play (his CoD video from 2015 only mentions that he couldn't play CoD 3, for instance). The early videos also had an in-person introduction, while newer videos integrate the important parts of that introduction into the script.

And of course, Noah himself has changed over the past decade—it's been a busy ten years, his opinions about games, their place in the world, and that world have shifted in ways that influence his commentary.

But the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Caldwell-Gervais still writes long video essays about entire franchises, albeit now with confidence that his audience will watch a single video for 3-8 hours if he finds enough to say about a series.

He still weaves all those facts about the game in with what development details he can dig up and context from outside the video game subculture to frame his insights as narratives about the franchises and their creators.

He still talks about highbrow literature-class stuff like tone and theme, contrasted with an obvious love for the lowbrow thrills of shooty bang bang. He still accepts "dumb" games, criticizing them for being dumb only when it clashes with other elements/ambitions of the game. (Or when they really punch the boulder.)

With the exception of a few in-video callbacks, he still avoids in-jokes, irrelevant memes, and other elements which might make his work seem inaccessible to newcomers or dated to latecomers. He'll reference current events and recent releases from time to time, so the videos aren't really timeless, but they're not time-locked, either.

He still focuses on shooters and RPGs, with a strong interest in horror and occasional dips into story-dominated titles and the odd pure strategy game. (Also Western games, notable less for their prevalence in NCG's body of work and more for the fact that he's covered both Red Dead Redemption and Call of Juarez, darn near the only notable video game series set in the Old West.)

He still plays the action games with a level of skill that seems reasonable to me, but which comment section critics say is so abysmal that his opinions about action games shouldn't count (except where they agree with the critic's).

Caldwell-Gervais still references film and other media as comparisons to most games he covers. He still shows affinity for Americana, particularly the arid landscapes of the Southwest, and also Western movies.

He still has a largely positive outlook, focusing on games and series worth praising when he can and looking for the best aspects of even the worst games he covers. To this end, he still tries to find the game's level and meet it there. And yet, when a game fails on every level or aims well below its potential, he will still criticize it for those disappointments.

He still focuses on how the different elements of a game interact, prioritizing that over the sum of his parts. He still likes to point out when mechanics, aesthetics, themes, or plot points that work in one title undermine a very similar work—or contrarily, when things that sank one rescued another. It's all about context.

He's still relentlessly critical of corporate bullshit, whether that's publishers forcing Marketable™ elements into a context that doesn't artistically support them or executives maintaining and concealing an abusive work environment.

And of course, he still starts each video with a shot of some hand-written title card, set to thematically-appropriate music that almost certainly gets every video copyright claimed.

Some things are hard to quantify.

In an absolute sense, the filmography (youtography?) of the infamously hidebound Doug Walker has changed more over the years. But that's the kind of fact that conceals more than it reveals.

Walker adds new tools to his toolbelt and throws new ideas into his productions, but the fundamentals stay the same. He makes the same kinds of complaints, tells the same kinds of jokes, films the same kinds of shots. He doesn't try to improve his media literacy, or his writing, or his cinematography. Or his white-balancing.

Part of why Caldwell-Gervais's old videos hold up so much better than 2013 Walker videos (or 2022 ones) is that Caldwell-Gervais started at a much higher level of quality—fewer moving parts than even pre-Demo-Reel Nostalgia Critic, with every piece mastered. (Except audio.)

But part is that Caldwell-Gervais has improved, and not just with audio. I can't put my finger on it, but something about his writing has changed. His older videos feel more superficial, more focused on the games for their own sake and what works or doesn't work for a given genre or franchise. His newer ones feel like they're trying to be deeper, to go beyond individual video games and use them to say something about gaming as a whole, or even the world beyond.

And unlike Walker, NCG's efforts to Do More are backed by the skill, effort, and attention to detail needed to pull them off. I rewatch NCG's older videos out of a self-destructive sense of completionism, or a desire for familiar background noise. I rewatch his newer videos because they're interesting, even on subsequent rewatches.

#noah caldwell-gervais #video essays #youtube #retrospective #video games #meta

[rubecso]

Does anyone else have that one video essayist who keeps them sane during insomnia episodes?

#noah caldwell-gervais #insomnia #video essays

[aaronsrpgs]

Noah Caldwell-Gervais is a big influence on my approach to exploration & critique. And Fallout is a big influence on my game stuff. So here's almost 10 hours of the former talking about the latter.

#noah caldwell-gervais #fallout #youtube #Youtube

[rex101111]

new noah caldwell gervais travelogue dropped!!! go see it!!!  

#noah caldwell-gervais #noah never misses

[byfeldonscane]

#Video Games #Noah Caldwell-Gervais #Bloodborne #Sekiro #Elden Ring

[thejaymo]

How did I only just find out about the new Noah Caldwell-Gervais drop!?

#Noah Caldwell-Gervais #quake #retro gaming #video essay #Youtube

[artbyblastweave]

Brotherhood of Steel

Oh, wow, this one's been languishing for like six months, sorry about that. Anyway the show is inspiring me to revisit this question- Anyway, one thing about the Brotherhood of steel- I think that to an extent, the Brotherhood in general suffers from the same kind of problem as Iron Man, where their out-of-universe popularity, star power, and resultant shoehorning into installments where they absolutely don't belong, all serve to elide that the actual text of even the Bethesda-produced Fallouts aren't particularly gung-ho about the Brotherhood as an organization.

I think the buzz around them, the misaimed-fandom they accrue and the resultant back-and-forth in all the discursive spaces, sort of primes you to expect a humanity-fuck-yeah sort of attitude in the source text. But in the games themselves, it's really only that Fallout 3 that positions the Brotherhood as straightforward quote-unquote "good guys," and paying even a little attention to the subtext demonstrates that that's an extremely tenuous and conditional status. Half of their guys started their own Brotherhood with blackjack and hookers because Lyons was too nice! Lyons got sent east in the first place because he was too nice! The guy they left behind in Pittsburg rebuilt the entire local economy as a slave society! Many of Lyons nominal "supporters" are at least quietly grumbling about his priorities when you talk to them, they're clearly itching to collapse back into a comfortable authoritarianism- which, of course, they do, come Fallout 4. Their turn in that direction was completely telegraphed by 3. And 4, which admittedly had a lot of mixed-messaging on this point, telegraphed.... whatever the fuck they've become in the TV show. Which is interesting, right, because if you're even remotely media-literate, it's impossible to view the TV version of the Brotherhood as anything remotely good. We're introduced with a hazing ritual, a panning shot of child-soldiers sharing a cigarette, meatheads playing a game of brickball, an Elder who screams "cult leader," a brotherhood knight who's framed as this monstrous, inhuman presence during Maximus's interrogation. The branding scene, the abuse of squires. And then they go from oppressive to pathetic- Titus dying like a chump, Thaddeus being the world's chew toy, a half-dozen Brotherhood knights existing as suitably impressive target practice for the Ghoul in a big showdown.

By volume, this is going to be most people's first introduction to the Brotherhood as an organization. This is what the Brotherhood is now, for all intents and purposes. I think they've basically poisoned the well on using the Brotherhood as a straightforwardly heroic faction ever again, and moreover it's adjusted my perception of whether even Bethesda ever understood them as such in the first place. It's still a complete worldbuilding kludge that they're on the East Coast at all, but I find myself wondering if hammering the Brotherhood into a suitably powerful antagonistic faction wasn't the long-term project here the whole time; if so, the obvious criticism from there is that the Brotherhood was a still a weird pick to evolve into that role, given their initial status in the first two games as a handful of overinflated bunker-dwelling pricks kept in a position of comparative superiority only by the failure of everyone else to play catch-up. Whatever, it can be made to work.

#Fallout tactics is in a weird spot here RE it's portrayal of the Brotherhood- refer to the Noah-Caldwell-gervais video on that point #fallout #fallout 3 #fallout 4 #fallout new vegas #fallout tv #fallout show #thoughts #meta #ask #asks #analysis #BoS #Brotherhood of steel #fallout 2 #fotv #fallout amazon

[drunkenskunk]

Can someone explain something to me?

So I finally finished watching Noah Caldwell-Gervais' latest more-than-feature-length documentary retrospective on the Diablo games.

Okay, I tell a lie: I just finished watching it for the third time. The video is quite good. Noah Caldwell-Gervais Miss Even Once Challenge (Impossible)

Still, there is a question here that I feel like I need help understanding. Why does watching this make me want to play Diablo again?

Like, it shouldn't, right? The 2nd half of the video is him going into great detail about all the horrific monetization of modern Blizzard games and how it hampers the surprisingly excellent (for the genre) writing, especially for Diablo 4. Hell, the entire section of Diablo Immortal feels like a dissection of how casinos work.

And, I mean, I personally swore off Blizzard games back in what I call "Black February," when Bobby Fucking Kotick announced record profits and then laid off 800 people in the same breath. And even though the prolapsed anus shoved into a ill-fitting human suit that is Bobby Fucking Kotick is gone, his stench and filth still remains at Activision Blizzard King.

So why is the thought "You should play Diablo again" swirling around inside my brain?

#drunk skunk #meanwhile #Diablo #noah caldwell gervais #Youtube

[isawken]

quinton reviews x jacob geller fan fiction where the story begins with the two of them sitting in a park, jacob outlining the history of the four canonical modes of Renaissance painting, describing the dramatic contrast of chiaroscuro, the melodic dissonance of cangiante, the hazy placidity of sfumato, and the harmonic balance of unione. quinton then goes on to relate each of these modes to a teenager in a nickelodeon sitcom with great thoughtfulness and care, even citing the sfumato utilized in the mona lisa as ancestral to gibby from icarly's cherubic face. then they fuck nasty in a truck stop off of US route 50 and never see each other again

#i have once again been watching Video Essays #quinton reviews #jacob geller #kenposting #noah caldwell gervais gets a cameo at the truck stop bc he had to make a detour off i 80 during his lincoln highway video #Youtube Video Essayist Cinematic Universe when

[crionic-dubs]

And fuck this guy in particular

#frostpunk #youtube comments #noah caldwell gervais #socialism #human nature

[stackslip]

whenever noah gervais has something out i fantasize about an alternative life where my writing and my voice are just as captivating and i make 9 hour videos/podcasts about stories i like that move and fascinate others with even a tenth of the intensity i feel towards noah

#oh to write a noah caldwell gervais style analysis of all of fujimotos works #or to be able to travel without money issues or anxiety and make themed road trips that leaves a viewer moved to tears #eli talks

[whereismywizardhat]

NEW NOAH GERVAIS VIDEO LETS GOOOOOOOOOO

#noah caldwell gervais #quake #id software #Youtube

[plattenbau-persephone-praxis]

I know Noah Caldwell-Gervais already did a video on Disco Elysium and I think it's a great one, but I desperately want one of those 7 hours long deconstructive videos like his about the game. One that critically analyzes every facet of the game, everything that elevates it beyond a good game and into one of the best pieces of fiction of all times. And of course, since all pieces of media have those, where its failings lie.

#personal #noah caldwell gervais #disco elysium #like how the game choses to focus on two people who do not embody male beauty standards and yet has spawned a fandom of love for them #or honestly they don't even embody standards of functioning members of society lol #preferably this video would be made by someone of Eastern European origin #of Eastern European experiences lmao #SAME WITH FF14 BTW

[rex101111]

noah caldwell-gervais soulsborne video yes yes YESSS

#random crap #so good #noah caldwell-gervais