The Greatest Evil A Game Can Commit

Video games go to a great many lengths to subvert our expectations as players. But there is one way games do this that I find to be particularly evil. Let’s talk about it.

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What is Xenia? (0:00)
Opera GX is just better (3:06)
Are checkpoints a right? (4:52)
Adding a mental stack to save points (8:02)
Why you don't often see Xenia broken (12:51)
Resting in Lisa The Painful (15:51)
Fear and Hunger hates you (18:09)
The Greatest Evil (21:41)
Quick update! (23:58)

▶Games Shown

Stellar Blade (2024)
Final Fantasy XIII (2009)
Final Fantasy VII Remake (2020)
Hollow Knight (2017)
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (2023)
Elden Ring (2022)
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (2024)
Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door (2024)
Final Fantasy X (2001)
Persona 5: Royal (2019)
Xenoblade Chronicles 3 (2022)
Final Fantasy VII (1997)
Signalis (2022)
Alan Wake 2 (2023)
Metroid Dread (2021)
Ghost of Tsushima (2020)
Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice (2017)
Death's Door (2021)
Haven (2021)
Super Mario Bros. Wonder (2023)
Resident Evil 4 (2023)
Shin Megami Tensei V Vengeance (2024)
Doki Doki Literature Club! (2017)
Eastward (2021)
Super Mario Odyssey (2017)
Shovel Knight (2014)
Dark Souls (2011)
Persona 5 (2016)
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (2011)
Deltarune Chapter 2 (2021)
Inscryption (2021)
Florence (2018)
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (1997)
Undertale (2015)
Final Fantasy V (1992)
Guilty Gear Strive (2021)
Balatro (2024)
OMORI (2020)
Axiom Verge (2015)
Final Fantasy XII (2006)
Chrono Trigger (1995)
I Wanna Be the Guy: The Movie - The Game (2007)
Earthbound (1994)
Final Fantasy VI (1994)
Resident Evil 2 (2019)
Lisa: The Painful (2014)
Dragon Quest XI (2017)
Dead Cells (2017)

▶Movies/TV/Anime Shown

Les Miserables (2012)
Beauty and The Beast (1991)
Game of Thrones
Frieren (2024)

▶Media/Clips/Considerations:

All the things that can happen when you are resting in Lisa: The Painful

Resident Evil 7 biohazard Developer Interviews: The 'Safe Room' Theme

▶Music Sources (in Order):
Gate of Time - The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword OST
Catacombs - Diablo OST
M.I.S.T - Parasite Eve II OST
How much? - Persona 4 OST
Safe Room - Resident Evil Code Veronica OST
Descendant of Shinobi - Final Fantasy VII OST
UNATCO - Deus Ex OST
Reflections - Hollow Knight OST
Save theme - Resident Evil 4 OST
Second Mission - P.N.03 OST
Warm Welcome - Hollow Knight OST
Maternal Heart - Silent Hill 3 OST
Safe Room - Resident Evil 7 OST
Devil's Bath Boys - LISA: The Painful OST
Deep Inside Me - LISA: The Painful OST
Down Time - Silent Hill OST
Menu Theme - Sword of the Berserk: Guts' Rage OST
Ephemeral - Shin Megami Tensei V OST

▶Research Sources

(A) Excitation Transfer and Sexual Attraction

(B) Enjoyment of Mediated Fright and Violence: A Meta-Analysis

(C) The Psychology of Horror Games

(D) Bonfire Mimics Art

(E) Game of Thrones: The Laws of Hospitality, Explained

(F) Red Wedding Historical Influences

(G) The Guest Right

(H) Examples of Xenia in Homer’s Odyssey

(I) TV Tropes: Treacherous Checkpoints

[DarylTalksGames]

What is your favorite treacherous checkpoint? What did I miss? Let me know below!

[thedankswordsmantm]

In Dead Space 1 they establish elevators are safe.

In Dead Space 2, they drop a necromorph on you in the elevator.

[mrlucy]

Miyazaki was once asked about the mimic bonfire. He responded by saying that he wouldn't dream of betraying the player's trust like that. He probably felt the same as you've mentioned: players would no longer trust bonfires for the rest of the game.

[Platitudinous]

Cave Story does a really funny thing where one of the very first doors you encounter in the game is actually an enemy you have to defeat before going through the door, so first-time players will distrust many doors afterwards, but this never happens again

[TheKaffeekatze]

At one point during Amnesia: The Bunker, the safe room music no longer plays in the room. You might not notice it at first, given how stressful the game is.

And then you find out why: the beast has dug a hole in the wall from which it can crawl out of. The room is no longer safe.

[KatallinaVT]

There is also a beautiful myth in Greek mythology about the concept you brought up at the start of your video. Zeus and Hermes go down to earth to see if they can find one decent set of people. If they can't, they plan to flood the earth. They finally come to a run down house which is home to an elderly couple.

The couple are the first people who have not turned the two disguised gods away. They offer Hermes and Zeus a place to stay, as well as hospitality--by which, I mean they offer their guests the best things that they have, meager though they might be. They sacrifice for the betterment of these strangers.

In the morning, Zeus and Hermes reveal the truth of who they are to the couple, and ask how they can reward them for the great kindness they have shown. The couple's lives renewed to their former youth, and their home is turned into a temple with a beautiful garden of fruit trees. Most importantly, they are gifted with a promise that when their time to pass on comes, they will not be separated, but will rather pass on together. And with regard to this, the gods keep their word.

I'm not sure if I ended up blending two myths together, but growing up I always brought a small gift to the home of anyone I was staying with as a guest due to the myth I just shared. As a thank you for those people who were letting me stay in their home. This is one of my favorite myths, and the way having heard it and connecting with it impacted my life and how I feel about hospitality is something I'm always happy to share with others when an opportunity pops up, as it has here.

[adammoynihan]

I actually appreciate that Dark Souls and Resident Evil don't troll you with fake safe zones because it would violate one of the core creative pillars of their game design and needlessly punish the player out of spite

[davidbrickey]

I feel like in the Hollow Knight example, it's important to note that a real save point is found very, very shortly after the fake one. If memory serves there's no combat between the two and no way to miss it. It wants to mess with you, but it''s not actually trying to screw up your progress.

[rumplstiltztinkerstein]

The original Resident Evil 3 has a moment where you return to the save point after spending a long time searching for an item. You enter the room and there is no save song. You approach the typewriter and nemesis crashes down from the roof. Starting a chase sequence when we least want it.

Original Dead Space has a save spot that makes a necromorph spawn breathing down your neck when you finish upgrading your weapon.

[ambientq]

The one that stuck with me was the Firelink Shrine bonfire in Dark Souls. It's the bonfire you'll frequent the most early game and it's in a central location, you'll return often. Hearing the music and the crackling of the fire put me at easy every time I returned to it...until the crackling is gone. Turns out someone killed the Firekeeper of that Bonfire. Respite is gone.
This not only made me hunt down the person who could've done this, but as a player I felt betrayed that one of my most used checkpoints was gone.

[loganressler]

Another Crab's Treasure does the whole "bonfire mimic" thing with in the deep sea level (probably the most arduous of the game) where approaching what you think is finally your Moon Snail Shell checkpoint is actually the already inhabited by the next boss. The game mercifully respawns you right outside the boss arena when you die, but the impact of slogging through that level only to think you'll have to do it again as a boss walkback is such a great moment of defeat that matches Kril's own ennui at that point in the game

[eclipsicalbluestocking]

"You can't rest when there's enemies nearby"

[Kimeters]

I imagine a game where the save prompt text is more like "Do you feel safe?"
If you have not ensured that the room and hiding spaces are clear, then something comes out and engages you unfairly if you respond, "Yes"

[LokheeNyx]

I still remember playing Darkest Dungeon and getting ambushed while camping… Reynauld, let thy sacrifice not be in vain

[Jtriggers]

0:34 In beginning, you forgot to mention one big point. There is a good chance if Zeus is disguised as someone needing shelter. He will transform into you and sleep with your wife.

[superlagbro]

While not exactly the same, i love how in Kirby 64, if you pause during the final boss, the exit stage button is replaced with one that says "Tough it out!" that functions identically to resume.

[kayinnasaki]

To add a little as the dev of I Wanna Be The Guy, and, hilariously, the person who coined the term Mental Stack, part of the reason the "Evil" save point is the last one is because I actually wanted to avoid adding to the player's mental stack. The game had enough paranoia, and I didn't want to make the player paranoid about *the one* thing I was treating as sacred.

... Buuut since I built up all that good will, I might as well have spent it at the end, where it wouldn't have any long term repercussions on how players approached the game. ;)

[Snackie_]

There is a game where you're not even guaranteed safety in the pause menu. In Voices Of The Void, normally you can open the pause menu to save the game, but there are some entities that can force you out of the pause menu and they can even still move towards you while the game is paused.

[MegaBearsFan]

I would like to point out that there is ONE instance of breaking "right of guest" in the first Dark Souls. Its when you return to Firelink from Blighttown only to find that the Fire Keeper is murdered, and the bonfire no longer functions.

[PROTOBLUES]

I once had a friend that explained to me this very concept. They then went on to make a game they never released that was entirely designed around Save points.
Imagine your playing Solitaire but it's with save points.
Music changed (simple music as they weren't very good at it), Visuals confused you and made you wonder if the save point was real or fake. There was even a hidden boss fight for turning your nose up to enough save points in a row.
It was an evil game that I'm almost sad it never saw the light of day since this friend is now gone. It was a brutal experience that shook a younger me for awhile. It was a unique game