Call me old fashioned but I miss the old days when shit like this would take decades to discover and even then it would be shrouded in doubt and mystery.
Kids today just hop on youtube and know all the secrets in a short 40 minute video full of ads sponsorships and fillers.
Call me old fashioned but I miss the old days when shit like this would take decades to discover and even then it would be shrouded in doubt and mystery.
You are old fashioned, but also wrong. In the old days there were gaming guides sold alongside games that provided the same information that players can get on youtube. Only a few games have had secrets revealed years after they came out.
The youtube full of ads and sponsors is crappier though, if you don’t just block them.
There was absolutely a sweet period around when indy games were taking off and after game guides had fallen out of favour, where secrets like this in medium sized games (or huge indy hits) could remain for years.
I would like to remind the assorted that the official final fantasy 9 guidebook left out massive chunks of useful information to encourage you to go online to their website.
The only guide I remember using was a friends FF7 phone book sized thing that included how to breed chocobos and al the summons. After doing all the side stuff fisrst the final fight with Sepheroth was pretty underwhelming…
I remember that! Those were the days. The Missingno glitch made it sound so plausible. That and the various supposed guides on how to unlock Pikachu with Surf in Gold/Silver.
We actually had a kid with a Mew on his cartridge all the way back then in one of the parallel classes. I think he got it legit off of one of the giveaways/events.
Needless to say he and his link cable was quite the popular 8/9-year old in the school yard. And he put that bargaining power to use.
Same here, although his could have been GameSharked for all I know. Didn’t matter, that sweet, sweet 151 was finally mine, until my little brother started his own save while I was at school. Damn near unforgivable
I can’t find it anymore but I swear there’s a method involving the bug catching contest where you could end up teaching any moves to any pokemon and I ended up with an onix with surf.
And then there’s Noita, in which people have put in serious cryptographic effort over years trying to decipher the last two puzzles and yet no answers are forthcoming because the game was conjured by druids and ancient Finnish forest spirits
The game is very difficult but if you still have an interest there are a ton of workshop mods that make the game easier to learn/play. It’s really fun and I’ve logged hundreds of hours but vanilla is honestly too hard for me too.
I got the mod that lets you respawn at the last Holy Mountain visited, and then there’s the two that kinda go together that add starting classes and load outs to the game. I also got the “cheat mode” one that lets you edit wands whenever, add spells and items etc.
Yup I’ve tried all those too. They’re great. I found that a decently balanced experience for me was the one that adds tons of inventory space so I could build really good wands and the mini map mod. Knowing where enemies and hearts are makes the game a lot easier.
If you read the article, this isn’t a rarest ending like the headline says. There is an ending playing as Lae’zel most players don’t take because it’s a bad ending that obviously ends the story. The ending being talked about is a hacked ending that was maybe an idea at one point to get to the above ending via an alternative path, but wasn’t ultimately implemented. I wouldn’t even call this an ending frankly. It’s more “there’s some game files that can lead to each other if X or Y is marked, but actually can’t because Z being marked cuts that path off”. More of a glitch than anything.
So from the article the Lae’zel ending only happenings if you
Super spoiler don’t think there’s a spoiler text accepted across all instances yet
Accept becoming a mind flayer and some events thereafter and then follow through with Vlaak’ith telling you to kill yourself. This “rare no one’s taken” glitch ending seems to be if you listen to Vlaak’ith, but don’t turn mind flayer you can still take the kill yourself ending if you check the mind flayer box …despite not being mind flayer. Which could only happen through a glitch. So it’s just a you could take this path if you’d checked X box but you didn’t so can’t “ending”. I’m not sure what this article is trying to say honestly as it’s literally just “if you make X choice you could get Y ending, but if you glitch the game to believe you made X choice you could get Y ending” article.
Datamining is the worst except in the cases where it just becomes more of a mystery. Like “we know there’s this scene in the game and it doesn’t appear to be cut, but we can’t figure out how to get to it without hacking yet.” Like the Nuclear Disarmament cutscene in MGS5. It was found pretty early on, but nobody was sure how it worked until enough people worked together to dismantle every single nuke on the platform for the game (IIRC PlayStation did it first).
When I was your age, I’d go down to the corner store where I’d drop down $2.50 for a freshly printed copy of Nintendo Power and a package of bubble-gum cigarettes when I wanted to get my ads and filler squeezed between spoilers.
If I really wanted to beat a game quick, I’d buy myself a Game Genie.
When hacking is used in context of Gameboy games then I’d normally first think of using external tools such as a gameshark to directly edit memory, rather than game glitches. I’m not sure most people would say missingno glitch is hacking but it is a memory exploit.
One of the skulls in Halo 3 was found by hackers in game scripts, a decent number of secrets in the indie game Fez were found by reverse engineering or brute force. Not to mention game guides in even older days.
So no it’s not really always been “shrouded in doubt and mystery”.
It’s the data diving that’s really ruined the fun of this. You can’t hide anything in a game now because for a legion of hackers, exposing every locked or hidden thing in new releases is the game. I think that’s why so many indie games that want to have deep hidden content end up making ARGs, so you only have to put hints in the game and the solution is on your website or in a geocache or something. Then the worst the data miners can do is dig up all the clues faster.
I also feel like part of the appeal of “lore over plot” is tied up in this. With YouTube and Twitch, it’s likely that more people will consume your game in the form of “lore analysis” videos than will ever play your game.
If your game just tells a straightforward plot, then a 12 hour commented Let’s Play is going to eat some amount of people who might otherwise play your 60 hour game. I definitely found Whitelight’s 7 hour walk through of Death Stranding a lot more interesting than playing it.
With the lore-heavy games, there’s no consensus story to spoil so everyone can make their own 10 hour long interpretation of what Goldmask’s finger positioning implies about the elden lord’s dining habits. It feeds a whole speculative video ecosystem and encourages people to play the games and “decide for yourself” what it all means.
Call me old fashioned but I miss the old days when shit like this would take decades to discover and even then it would be shrouded in doubt and mystery.
Kids today just hop on youtube and know all the secrets in a short 40 minute video full of ads sponsorships and fillers.
You are old fashioned, but also wrong. In the old days there were gaming guides sold alongside games that provided the same information that players can get on youtube. Only a few games have had secrets revealed years after they came out.
The youtube full of ads and sponsors is crappier though, if you don’t just block them.
There was absolutely a sweet period around when indy games were taking off and after game guides had fallen out of favour, where secrets like this in medium sized games (or huge indy hits) could remain for years.
I would like to remind the assorted that the official final fantasy 9 guidebook left out massive chunks of useful information to encourage you to go online to their website.
It was a dark time.
The only guide I remember using was a friends FF7 phone book sized thing that included how to breed chocobos and al the summons. After doing all the side stuff fisrst the final fight with Sepheroth was pretty underwhelming…
Still trying to catch that mew under the car near the SS Anne
You’ll probably enjoy this. https://youtube.com/watch?v=i2x3pIvVnP4
Seven years ago and I still hadn’t heard of this. I definitely enjoyed that, thank you!
I remember that! Those were the days. The Missingno glitch made it sound so plausible. That and the various supposed guides on how to unlock Pikachu with Surf in Gold/Silver.
I ended up doing the teleportation glitch to get a mew as an adult so I could finally get some closure
We actually had a kid with a Mew on his cartridge all the way back then in one of the parallel classes. I think he got it legit off of one of the giveaways/events.
Needless to say he and his link cable was quite the popular 8/9-year old in the school yard. And he put that bargaining power to use.
Same here, although his could have been GameSharked for all I know. Didn’t matter, that sweet, sweet 151 was finally mine, until my little brother started his own save while I was at school. Damn near unforgivable
I had a Game Genie and still remember the code to this day hahaha. I actually brought my Blue cart to an event and got a legitimate Mew as well!
Just to battle against? Because gen 1 didn’t have breeding, so he couldn’t give out Mews, right?
Edit: oh right, legendaries can’t breed anyway.
Gen 1 had easy cable club cloning.
Oh wow, that’s so easy.
I can’t find it anymore but I swear there’s a method involving the bug catching contest where you could end up teaching any moves to any pokemon and I ended up with an onix with surf.
Or pikablu by fighting the elite 4 50 times without healing
Love how most of these classic “cheats” are conveniently too tedious to verify. It didn’t work? You must’ve done it wrong.
And then there’s Noita, in which people have put in serious cryptographic effort over years trying to decipher the last two puzzles and yet no answers are forthcoming because the game was conjured by druids and ancient Finnish forest spirits
Do you perhaps have a link to more reading/watching on the silubject? I’m curious! I bought the game but refunded it cuz it’s too hard for me.
https://youtu.be/4lSPZWmmoS8?feature=shared
This video is a good explanation. There might be better ones but I’m not particularly knowledgeable about the community aspect of Noita
Excellent, thank you!
The game is very difficult but if you still have an interest there are a ton of workshop mods that make the game easier to learn/play. It’s really fun and I’ve logged hundreds of hours but vanilla is honestly too hard for me too.
I got the mod that lets you respawn at the last Holy Mountain visited, and then there’s the two that kinda go together that add starting classes and load outs to the game. I also got the “cheat mode” one that lets you edit wands whenever, add spells and items etc.
Yup I’ve tried all those too. They’re great. I found that a decently balanced experience for me was the one that adds tons of inventory space so I could build really good wands and the mini map mod. Knowing where enemies and hearts are makes the game a lot easier.
If you want more information about the game in general, this goes over it’s insanity pretty well
https://youtu.be/VMx6fPyCbCI
If you read the article, this isn’t a rarest ending like the headline says. There is an ending playing as Lae’zel most players don’t take because it’s a bad ending that obviously ends the story. The ending being talked about is a hacked ending that was maybe an idea at one point to get to the above ending via an alternative path, but wasn’t ultimately implemented. I wouldn’t even call this an ending frankly. It’s more “there’s some game files that can lead to each other if X or Y is marked, but actually can’t because Z being marked cuts that path off”. More of a glitch than anything.
lol I definitely (saved, then) took the Gale ending. No way I wasn’t choosing it. Can you not do that with Lae’zel?
So from the article the Lae’zel ending only happenings if you
Super spoiler don’t think there’s a spoiler text accepted across all instances yet
Accept becoming a mind flayer and some events thereafter and then follow through with Vlaak’ith telling you to kill yourself. This “rare no one’s taken” glitch ending seems to be if you listen to Vlaak’ith, but don’t turn mind flayer you can still take the kill yourself ending if you check the mind flayer box …despite not being mind flayer. Which could only happen through a glitch. So it’s just a you could take this path if you’d checked X box but you didn’t so can’t “ending”. I’m not sure what this article is trying to say honestly as it’s literally just “if you make X choice you could get Y ending, but if you glitch the game to believe you made X choice you could get Y ending” article.
Datamining is the worst except in the cases where it just becomes more of a mystery. Like “we know there’s this scene in the game and it doesn’t appear to be cut, but we can’t figure out how to get to it without hacking yet.” Like the Nuclear Disarmament cutscene in MGS5. It was found pretty early on, but nobody was sure how it worked until enough people worked together to dismantle every single nuke on the platform for the game (IIRC PlayStation did it first).
When I was your age, I’d go down to the corner store where I’d drop down $2.50 for a freshly printed copy of Nintendo Power and a package of bubble-gum cigarettes when I wanted to get my ads and filler squeezed between spoilers.
If I really wanted to beat a game quick, I’d buy myself a Game Genie.
Wasn’t Mew in the original Pokémon games found through data mining and only obtainable by hacking?
Mew was also given out free at Ninendo events.
Obtainable via memory exploits, if you want to call that hacking.
Memory manipulation is very much hacking. Pretty much the form of computer hacking.
When hacking is used in context of Gameboy games then I’d normally first think of using external tools such as a gameshark to directly edit memory, rather than game glitches. I’m not sure most people would say missingno glitch is hacking but it is a memory exploit.
One of the skulls in Halo 3 was found by hackers in game scripts, a decent number of secrets in the indie game Fez were found by reverse engineering or brute force. Not to mention game guides in even older days.
So no it’s not really always been “shrouded in doubt and mystery”.
You’re old fashioned. :)
Toasty!
It’s the data diving that’s really ruined the fun of this. You can’t hide anything in a game now because for a legion of hackers, exposing every locked or hidden thing in new releases is the game. I think that’s why so many indie games that want to have deep hidden content end up making ARGs, so you only have to put hints in the game and the solution is on your website or in a geocache or something. Then the worst the data miners can do is dig up all the clues faster.
I also feel like part of the appeal of “lore over plot” is tied up in this. With YouTube and Twitch, it’s likely that more people will consume your game in the form of “lore analysis” videos than will ever play your game.
If your game just tells a straightforward plot, then a 12 hour commented Let’s Play is going to eat some amount of people who might otherwise play your 60 hour game. I definitely found Whitelight’s 7 hour walk through of Death Stranding a lot more interesting than playing it.
With the lore-heavy games, there’s no consensus story to spoil so everyone can make their own 10 hour long interpretation of what Goldmask’s finger positioning implies about the elden lord’s dining habits. It feeds a whole speculative video ecosystem and encourages people to play the games and “decide for yourself” what it all means.
I think the secrets in Hearthstone are all server-side and took a while to unlock, but for that you have to be Always Online, which some people hate