The Cosmic Horror of Fear and Hunger
Dennis Ljeti
Views: 14281
Like: 1160
“Song of my soul, my voice is dead, | Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed | Shall dry and die in Lost Carcosa.”
An examination of survival horror JRPG Fear & Hunger’s mechanics and themes through the lens of cosmic horror.
CHAPTERS
Intro: 00:00 – 1:39
New Game and Characters: 1:40 – 6:34
What is Cosmic Horror?: 6:35 – 13:04
The Upper Floors – Primal Terror & Entropy: 13:05 – 20:43
The Mines – Eldritch Knowledge and Elder Gods: 20:44 – 28:03
The Village – The Cavedweller Look: 28:03 – 30:35
The Catacombs – Delving Too Deep: 30:36 – 33:16
Escape? – Madness and Trauma: 33:17 – 37:19
The Ancient City – Ignorance and Indifference: 37:20 – 45:23
The Void – Fear of the Unknown: 45:24 – 52:39
The Depths – Unbearable Truth and the Cruel Age: 52:40 – 58:03
Outro: 58:04 – 1:00:41
13.04.2024
Theirs alot of crossover with dnd and lovecraft fans were a weird messed up familly
ABSOLUTELY AMAZING VIDEO YOUR THE GOAT I LEGITIMATELY HAVENT SAT DOWN AND WATCHED A YOUTUBE VIDEO IN OVER 2 YEARS CAUSE THEY WHERE SO BORING BUT YOU BROKE THAT STREAK THANK YOU MY GLORIOUS KING 🎉🎉🎉
How I view the concept of eldritch beings that could erase us by total accident is like so: As confusing and morbidly intriguing as they are, why trouble myself with the fear of what they could do to us by complete accident? It's as you said yourself; They're indifferent to our existence, and we're more or less the dust mites we obliterate with a vacuum by accident or the bugs that get decimated by a car in motion.
We don't matter enough for them to really pay any attention unless we somehow directly provoke them.
1:30 There are censored mods for the game that pull most (maybe all) of the sexual stuff out. I'll definitely be using one of those mods when I finally get around to playing it.
Amazing video bro, subscribed🙏🙏
Did jro really just explode and went from 60 subs to 5k because of a single video? Like damn jro be doing funny numbers.
I usually really am not an "um acktually 🤓" person in comment sections, but Lovecraft did not invent the genre of cosmic horror. There were authors before him, some being a source of inspiration to him (ie the author of "The King in Yellow").
I get that lovecraft had alot of influence on the genre, but atp I'm at a personal war with this dead man for burying so many artists who wrote and created the genre before and along side him and it getting summarized as "lovecraftian" 😭 he's not the mastermind of cosmic horror and I will die on that hill
Otherwise good video though, I love fear and hunger alot ESPECIALLY due to it being so inherently rooted in cosmic horror ❤
This seems like a good video to listen to while crocheting.
More F&H otherwise my sub will have been for no reason
Fun Fact: In Lovecraft's stories, the Necronomicon had no supernatural or dangerous properties. It was the knowledge made known to any reader that made it dangerous. The misconception about the Necronomicon being a very dangerous magical tome is the Evil Dead version of the book which is called Necronomicon Ex Mortis, which very roughly means "The Name of Death [written] by Death". It was basically a ridiculously power spell book. The original Necronomicon is just a book of odd construction written by someone who was driven mad before/during/after writting it. It was written by a guy literally known as the "Mad Arab". He didn't socialize much.
16:50 residence evil lol
How is there not an escape, and bring down the culture on them ending? The whole power of humanity is that it can function as a single dreadful organism with 8 billion parts. This is my big beef with gamers. They are so passive, submissive, and thoughtless. The only time they ever stand up is to make other gamers sit down. No one ever fights for anything, even symbolically anymore, they just take what they are given and warp themselves to give it value. They aren't games, they are obedience training, and received wisdom with extra steps. Games in short turn gamers into NPCs. And it's both sad and pathetic. The solution to this structure is excavation. Dig it out like a fire ant mound. Digging a conical mine isn't complicated, it's just labor intensive. And if that wakes up some deus ex machina Cabin in the Woods apocalypse, whatever. Better sooner than later if the only difference is amount of pain produced.
really liked this 🙂
Love this video bro! Big fan of cosmic horror
"Triggering" and thats where I drop off. Content warnings are fine but to put trigger warnings in the video just means you're not worth listening to.
The whole idea of lovecraft horror is silly, because human life is never small, even if there was a gaint monsters out there that don't think of us (and in a way there are) it wouldn't matter because human life does matter. A worm or a weed isn't anything compared to a human life.
Bros got back to back bangers
I really liked this video! It was very interesting and fun to watch. I also really like the way you recapped the game, makes me feel like I'm listening to a good retelling of a story. 🙂 You should a video about fear and hunger termina, i'd like to see how your opinion on how tge display of cosmic horrors differs from the first game. Annyway just wanted to say i really liked this video, good work 😀
did you just earn over 4k subs? nice
Pray to Almer get blood portal, buy the treasure maps, go to Mahabre, get transmutation, and your good infinite resources and fast travel
The ever-present theme of there not being any light of hope in the overpowering darkness that is the dungeons. This game isn't all dark for the sake of being dark, there are very few moments of kindness in this game to keep the characters moving forward, if not for their initial motivations, and even if it's to lure them deeper in these dungeons.
Just like the God of Fear and hunger herself says, there's beauty in this darkness, and it takes real emotions to bring something like this out that we as people aren't able and meant to understand in a game.
Even if I keep consuming these F&H videos, there's always something new to take away from someone else's perspective. Amazing work on this.
Man, you have a new subscriber. Your videos are awesome. Keep on going
I can respect a person who just spent an hour talking about cosmic horror and then being honest about the fact that the game is not fun lol
for some schmuck with 3 videos this is really well made
Absolute banger. Very well paced and was engaged the whole time. looking to more videos like it
Brilliant video dude. Good job 👍
That bit about Grave of the Fireflies and Blood Meridian called me out… I guess I just thirst for misery. Maybe I should actually play this game…
I have to say that this is the first Fear and Hunger Explained video that I actually watched all the way through. Congrats on being the only commentator interesting enough to keep my ADHD brain entertained and engaged.
At 22:44, is the skeleton in the chair Miro? That chair's design is anachronistic. It's padded and has casters.
6:30 so total war isnt a Cosmic horror Game 😭😭
45:30 but we can found all the new gods' in presente timd
Fear and Hunger is very unique. Like TMNT on the NES, you do not win anything, you just do better each time.
No single human can escape hunger (predating) and fear (being a prey).
However, human civilization, collectively, have been doing a really good job working towards it over the last couple of tens of thousands of years. When was the last time you were truly hungry? When did you last fear for your life?
Humanity is on the right track.
I personally have been struggling with existentialism recently and getting into this games lore made me almost have a panic attack but im lucky that today I feel good enough to watch this lolol
Isn't Fear & Hunger just an RPG? JRPG is specifically Japanese RPG.
Thank you for this great video ! I love this univers and really felt this dread you described. It's very interesting to see it elaborated on like this ! I hope you will also explore Termina, i would love to pick your brain on that, which in my opinion can be seen both as a doubling down on this existencial dread theme or more so going full absurdism " One must imagine Marcoh happy that he can confront his demons" xD
Great stuff man! Thoroughly enjoyed this one and hope to see more deep dives in the future!
Thank you so much for this awesome video!
I never thought I'd see gore, mutilation, cannibalism and an actual orgy in a game with the same kind of graphics Pokemon or Zelda had in GameBoy Color.
Damn, really good video man
I will never not watch Fear and Hunger Analysis videos
I can't stop watching this video. Someone, please help.
You have a very silly cat 😀
Miro would fucking love Jeju Island. It's covered in dol harubang- "stone grandfathers". Don't let the name fool you, they are giant dicks in disguise and they are EVERYWHERE.
Ladies and gentlemen, I declare on this day, in this comment section, at this hour, that we need a Neil Breen Mod for Fear and Hunger.
Just discovered you, and this was a fantastic overview of a very dark game.
29:29 fun fact: Lovecraft wrote The Shadow Over Innsmouth directly after he found out he had Welsh blood. As a virulent racist and xenophobe, he Did Not Vibe with that revelation. So… the story is essentially a weird existential crisis about feeling betrayed by his own “species” for being secretly “half-fish”, if you catch my drift.
The creator of this game isn't a deviant. It's very clear that all of the gruesome themes such as SA and violence serve a distinct purpose to disturb the viewer in a way that fits the canon of the universe very pertinently
🤓🔮
Lol arrowhead reference