No way to link this one, game is delisted everywhere for some reason. HAPPY HALLOWEEN Caption tool is unfortunately near unresponsive on my end right now, but this'll hopefully get remedied today.

As a ranger, Jacob does a lot for rare species. For one thing, he keeps them rare.

I'm honestly kind of surprised that Mandy was so confused by the story of this game, considering he's done games with far more complicated lore like Marathon. It might seem insane and nonsensical on the surface, but if we think about a few key lines and look at the story holistically, it all begins to make a lot more sense. Allow me to explain as best I can. There’s a very important line early on (7:36 in the video) that Mandy acknowledges, but kind of glosses over: Uganda used to be Jacob and Luke’s father Ben’s favorite place to hunt when he was younger, but he died before they opened it back up for hunting. This seems like a throwaway line at first, but it’s actually the key to everything. Think about it, Jacob has followed in his father’s footsteps as a park ranger and “conservationist”, even saying it’s in their blood. But we know what that *really* means, having seen Jacob in action. Jacob is a killing machine, a mass slaughterer of the animal kingdom, just like his father before him. And when I say “kingdom”, I mean it almost literally in this case; an *empire* of animals, with an emperor to rule them. A *Lion* Emperor, whose royal lineage is denoted by their all-black fur. This means that when Ben was younger, he journeyed to Uganda and slaughtered his way through the local wildlife, just like we later see Jacob do. Ben is *the reason* Uganda was closed for hunting. The Black Lion Emperor (BLE for short) *knew who Ben was,* and knew how much of a threat he was to its empire should he return, and further must have known how dangerous any of Ben’s potential off-spring of the Conservationist Bloodline would be should they reach maturity. Once we understand this, the rest of the plot becomes clear: The grizzly bear and its army of wolves weren’t simply a random group of psychotically enraged animals, they were *assassins,* dispatched directly by their ruler to kill not only Ben but his children, Jacob and Luke, who the BLE had learned were being trained by their father to follow in his footsteps. This was a threat that the BLE could not ignore, and so he sent forces to attempt to kill Jacob and Luke *before* they could finish their training, but was thwarted when Ben sacrificed his own life to save his children from the assassination plot. Ten years later, Jacob and Luke come to Uganda together, and seeing them together the BLE makes the logical conclusion that they have come to avenge their father. So he stages a new assassination attempt before they can meet, this time using a dust storm as a cover for the operation. This is why the water buffalo seem so intent on killing Jacob, because they *are.* The leopards waiting in the trees? An actual ambush, set up well in advance, knowing that their water buffalo co-conspirators (and Ed, more on that later) would drive their target directly into it. This is why every single animal is trying to kill Jacob during the stampede, they’re all in on it. Note that the rhino even makes its first play when they're near a cliff, an attempt to maximize its ambush. The Canadian geese even return to avenge their previous commander, the grizzly bear, having followed Jacob all the way across the ocean from North America, possibly even acting as the BLE's messengers between the two continents and being the ones to warn the BLE of Jacob's arrival. After that the game is pretty straight-forward, with the BLE’s various lieutenants (the rhino, the hippo, the Baboon King, etc) each making their own attempts on Jacob and Luke’s lives. The empty ranger station infested with hyenas? Cleared in advance as an ambush. The jammed signal from Ed? A deliberate play to isolate the brothers. The snake was a bit of a lone gunman as it were, and nearly succeeded, foiled only because Luke was closer than anticipated. It’s also never made explicit, but I would posit that the Baboon King brought Jacob to its arena in order to establish itself as a real political power by killing him publicly, possibly even as a long-term scheme for the BLE’s throne, one that the leopards attempted to thwart by killing Jacob before he could reach the arena. Later on we even see lions killing baboons as punishment for their king's hubris. By the time the rest of the BLE’s lieutenants are dead and it is forced to take matters into its own hands, it has already identified Jacob as the far greater threat, and so abducts Luke in order to force a confrontation on what it feels is the best terrain. That’s why it repeatedly dangles Luke in front of Jacob to lure him further into the trap. With so many of its lieutenants dead, it knows that it needs to kill them *personally* in order to not look weak in front of its remaining forces. Its plan fails and Jacob slays it, putting an end to a dynasty and avenging Ben’s murder. Unfortunately, the Black Lion Emperor's worst fears are proven true when the brothers decide to continue their slaughter after its defeat, now with no cohesive forces left to oppose their genocide of what remains of its people. Oh, and to answer Mandy’s question about what happened to the man the BLE dragged off? There never was a man, Ed was a turn-coat the entire time and made up the story to bait Luke (and by extension Jacob) into a trap. That’s why Ed drives Jacob directly into the first “stampede” ambush, gloating that he feels it will be a “very special hunt” for Jacob and his brother, and then sends Jacob off alone afterward. He even tries to trick Jacob into assassinating the leader of the elephants, a neutral party in the conflict, for their refusal to acknowledge the Black Lion Emperor (they have maintained their independence by being the only animals not to fear the black lions) and kill the Conservationists when they had the opportunity. After that fails he directs Jacob into the ambush that the hyenas have set up at the abandoned ranger station, and later is the one who tricks him into the jaguar ambush with the impala herd as bait, and then tells him to continue on through the baboon kingdom knowing what they have planned. It’s also why the signal gets jammed when Jacob is in the baboon kingdom; obviously the baboons didn’t do it, so clearly it was Ed trying to get him killed after telling him to keep moving forward into their ambush. Honestly, it all makes sense if you think about it, there’s just some subtleties to the story-telling you might not catch on the first play. I actually really appreciate the writers for refusing to hold the audience's hand on a lot of this stuff, it's always nice when writers trust their audiences to be smart and understand the intricacies of their plots and characters without needing everything spelled out.

24:16 _"Is the game implying that the baboons are jamming me?"_ That line actually unlocked a memory of a nightmare I had as a kid of yetis cutting my house's power and phone lines before breaking in through nearly every window simultaneously.

Imagine if the game started breaking the 4th wall and questioned the player like Spec Ops: The Line did. "How many endangered animals have you killed today?" "Do you feel like a conservationist yet?"

7:35 "He died before they opened it again" I like to think that the entirety of Uganda was shut down for years because Jacob's dad just hunted down its entire ecosystem. The surviving wildlife recognizes Jacob is his son and tries to stop him before he can follow in his father's footsteps, only to accidentally give him a reason to create another mass extinction event.

I'm slightly disappointed that killing the Alpha Black Lion didn't cause the mountain, the whole mountain, to collapse and force you into a timed escape sequence.

"I'm a conservationist" immediately followed by mowing down hundreds of animals like a horde of zombies is peak 2013 gaming.

“Liam Neeson says wolves will kill all life within 30 miles of their den.” I love the idea that Liam Neeson believes there are these 30 mile radius dead zones around wolf dens. Like wolves are some kind of devouring swarm stripping all biomass from their surroundings.

I think a park ranger is like a elite animal fighting shock trooper, a conservationist refers to conserving human life, and Alaska is just another warfront in the animal war.

This game was one AC-130 Death From Above segment away from being the most legendary shooter of all time.

"I'm a park ranger in Alaska" He said, thumbing the hammer on his hunting deagle

This game's plot can be summed up as "Men will literally kill 650 tons of biomass in Africa rather than go to therapy"

30:46 Mandy states you kill about 80 Wolves in this section. 37:08 Mandy estimates that you kill "about a hundred" more wolves. Mandalore says that you kill about 180 Wolves over the course of the flashback missions. The wolf population in Alaska is estimated to be between 7,000 to 11,000. If we call it in the middle at 9000, Jacob single-handedly killed about 2% of the total wolf population of Alaska over the course a single day back when he was a teenager. Jacob: "I'm A CoSeRvAtIoNsT"

Final Mission: Jacob and a group of heavily armed men approach the Gorilla enclosure of the Minneapolis Zoo. JACOB: "And remember...no sign language."

"it's howl's moving castle doctrine" is easily one of the best one-line jokes I've heard in a hot minute

I love the idea of a game about a conservationist losing himself to bloodlust when a long lost Ancient Ugandan civilization's curse interrupts his deceased father's birthday celebration. This game was screaming for a Condemned Criminal Origins type of twist where the constant animal attacks in massive numbers have a supernatural cause.

Jacob is a true conservationists, he is aiming at vital points to conserve bullets

Calling Jacob an "animal conservationist" is like calling the Doomslayer a "demon guardian".

“You are a conservationist, yes?” As you eliminate half the wolf population of Idaho made me lol

This is actually a stealth Warhammer game, the whole thing is just an average hunting trip on Catachan

Protagonist: *mows down enough animals in 5 minutes to last 100 hunting lifetimes* Guide: "Alright, let's get started then!" Good lord, it's like Detective Halligan got turned loose on Africa.

Worked on some of these games. I remember one day we were demoing the current build to a cabela's rep and things were going great until they saw a message that said "You've unlocked new weapons!" The rep was AGHAST. "WE DON'T SELL W E A P O N S, WE SELL FIREARMS" we had to spend the next day reviewing text in the code and sweeping the game for any instance of the word weapon and removing it.

The phrase "I saw the impala reaching" made me BURST OUT LAUGHING there was no way I was expecting that and it absolutely buckled me

In some bizarro alternate timeline or parallel universe, the Warhammer 40K universe has no Orks or other aliens, instead the Imperium of Conservationists is beset on all sides by enemies like chaos leopards, Geesanids and the dreaded Bison WAAAAGH. In the Grimdark future, there is only hunting.

The way he pulls out the freaking deagle at 10:10 with such smooth finesse in such a chaotic situation can only be explained by his background as a conservationist.

If you look at just the cutscenes, it's a touching story about two brothers overcoming their shared trauma of losing their father to a maneater. If you look at just the gameplay, it's DOOM 2016 if you pissed off a druid instead of satan. Combined, it's just batshit crazy

The Cabelas: Spec Ops: The Line cover fucking killed me. *Slow zoom over the horizon* "After the grizzlies took Portland, we had to resort to using special tactics." *Press F to launch White Phosphorous Strike*

I noticed Jamison Price was the voice of the dad, so as far as I'm concerned, Shadow the Hedgehog's biological father is Lu Bu.

the fact that you have a desert eagle as a sidearm in a hunting game is fucking hilarious

"Let's get on with the safari" is like if at the end of Spec Ops, Walker went "Let's keep going with our mission"

This game feels like it was made by people who've only ever heard about hunts from those "the fish gets bigger every retelling" types.

Only halfway through the video I understood Cabella's is an actual hunting equipment store in North America. It's incredible

Mandalore, you must understand when Jacob says he's a conservationist, they mean he conserves the human species from the never ending asymmetric animal assault.

The previous two Dangerous Hunts games were bonkers, too. One ended with a showdown against a yeti, and another was all about hunting a cryptid that was mind-controlling the local wildlife. There was even a Farcry: Instincts laboratory where there was an ill-fated scientific effort to understand and replicate the creature’s powers.

Today I learned that there are actually at least two insane Cabela's Dangerous Hunt games. I thought this video was going to be for the 2011 release, which is somehow even more ballistic. It basically has the same plot as well - hunters in Alaska, family tragedy, mass animal slaughter in Africa - except it also involves shadow wolves with glowing red eyes, brush fires, betrayal, possible werehyenas, and THE NIGHTFALL PROGRAM. If you enjoyed (?) this game, you'll probably like that one too.

All it's missing is an AC-130 mission and you have a full on military shooter

The key part of the story that Mandalore missed out on, was that Jacob was actually the physical manifestation of Death itself, and that all animals instinctively attacked him as his mere presence caused them all to act in self defense and try to save the rest of the animal kingdom from the Harvest of the Grim Reaper. The Sandstorm was a divine act, but it was caused by Jacob to trap the animals with him.

In this universe, a conservationist is probably like being the Warden of Nature, but warden in the sense of being in charge of a jail where every single inmate is a serial killer who has knives for fingers

All this does is makes me want a fantasy hunting game. Like imagine FPS Monster Hunter, but you have the health of a fly. You got set up your traps, stalk targets, carry away kills, etc all while only having the tools you brought so you have to avoid blowing through ammo and medical supplies.

"Howl's moving castle doctrine" might well be the funniest four words I've ever heard, thank you Mandalore

"Like I said, nature is cruel, Jacob! And I'm very in touch with my inner monkey." -Baboon King

Jacob being shown as an inexperienced young hunter only for it to be revealed he was Cabela-verse’s Doomguy is top tier story telling. Truly one of the hunting games of all time.

I remember playing CDH in 2005 and thinking “damn these animals have absolutely no chill!” The original CDH games were closer to hunting simulators. You’d spend 30 minutes stalking deer just to accidentally scare them off. There was no aim assist, no hud, no tracking help, and only skill and luck would allow you to make the kill. Then the next game you were no-scoping packs of wolves and emptying rifle magazines at alligators. And the final boss was a Yeti after sniping wild boars. I played the game over again just to laugh at it.

A DLC where Jacob's thirst for more challenging prey pushes him to hunt Osama wouldn't have surprised me

They said they wanted the CoD audience but they overshoot so hard they ended up making a game targeting the Doom 2016 audience 3 years ahead of time. What a mindbogglingly insane beast this game is!

I 100% thought this was gonna end with the brother turning evil and becoming the final boss like some twisted version of The Most Dangerous Game.

Jacob - “I’m a conservationist” *Proceeds to take a trip to Uganda and drives several species of animals to complete extinction*

I can only presume that the constant falling down from ledges is a homage/steal/echo of Spec Ops, with the constant descending into Dubai. That would mean Luke was already dead, explaining the lack of answer over the radio, and the whole thing wasn't flashbacks to the bear, but Jacob's fantasies of vengeance as he sits freezing in the snow by his family's cooling bodies. Gentleman, welcome to Alaska.

I was absolutely not prepared for the sandstorm stampede murder spree

It's also always worth remembering that the final boss of Cabela's Dangerous Hunts 2 is a Yeti

This video is a once in a lifetime experience. You can watch it again, but neither the story, nor the jokes will hit you like they did the first time watching the video.

Endless quick-time events and High School Musical haircuts. This game definitely is a testament to the late 2000s

I love how Mando calmly navigates through Ring and Limbo of the Lost with clinical detachment, but it's the stampede scene of Dangerous Hunts that allows us to hear his descent into madness in real-time.

Nothing screams "conservationist" like a guy taking out his childhood trauma on every animal he encounters like some sort of alaskan Batman dispensing vigilante justice on wildlife.

This game is basically what goes through my head when I see dinosaurs treated like a horde enemy in video games. The idea that seeing swarms of raptors attacking us alongside triceratops and ankylosaurus while being backed up by a flock of pterosaurs is the same kind of madness as the Jeep chance/everything must die sequence

I finally understand what a revisionist masterpiece is. Can't believe people hated this on release, it's a masterpiece of pure insanity deserving a proper remaster

I feel light-headed watching this. If you told me this video did not exist and there was a chemical leak in my house I would believe you without question

Jacob being a conservationist feels like a retired assassin becoming a doctor - or, more applicably, an assassin lying about being a doctor

I love how the side arm is just a Desert Eagle

I remember playing the story mode through with my Grandpa. I was like seven and I Thought it was the greatest story I had ever witnessed

The fact that all three of the main voice actors in this game went on to act in Vinland Saga just goes to show how powerful and far reaching Cabela’s truly is

"Is there lore I'm missing from a previous Cabela's game" - Apparently one of the Dangerous Hunts games had a demonic, paranormal animal monster as a villain that made other animals go insane.

I am astonished with how Mando keeps finding these absolutely bizarre games in the most unexpected places. Like I'm not big with hunting games. I never would've expected to find such a specimen on those grounds. Which makes me wonder which kind of weirdness I've missed and feel immensely thankful for Mando's devotion and delivery.

I love the idea of the lions attempting to set traps but they have no thumbs so they have to work together to do it "damnit frank, get your paw out of the way, he's gonna be here in like a minute"

If you befriend the baboon king you unlock a secret ending where Jacob takes antipsychotics and realizes he’s been in a mental asylum for years trapped in a cycle of guilt after killing his father in a hunting accident

9:07 I actually burst out laughing when Mandy started to gun down the animals so prolifically, even the ones that weren't a threat, while he nervously narrates the genocide.

"Howl's Moving Castle Doctrine" line of the decade that has already tattooed itself on my brain

"He may have hammered deep enough into the buffalo gene pool to change their fate as a species" This had me dying.

To be fair, he is legitimately acting as a conservationist in the context of the world he finds himself in: when you find yourself in a region with 20-30 ravenous leopards per each acre of woodland, you're gonna need to cull that predator population for the good of the ecosystem.😅

“How did we survive as a species before guns?” is the best reaction to the wildlife portrayed in this game 😂

This game treats wild animals like John Wick treats random thugs. Call Jacob Colonialism the way he's driving those bovine species to extinction.

The best way to make a game on a boring topic interesting is to add a schizophrenic amount of lore to it

He is conserving humanities dominance over the animals. There is no way the dev team was not laughing their asses off at how ridiculous this game was the whole time. They had to have known it was the last one.

It's like the main character once heard the phrase "man versus nature" and decided to end the war for good.

Dude, last night i was watching this before trying to sleep. I barely slept, had a fever and an awful cough, I was cooking in my own skin, and I swear to god, I had this never ending fever dream of all the combat clips spliced together, it was a special kind of hell all night. Finally awake now. Great video, as always Mandalore.

I half expected Jacob to start punching boulders and suplexing lions.

11:43 "maybe Cecil the Lion had AOE attacks and multiple phases" probably the greatest sentence ever uttered in gaming journalism

Out of morbid curiosity, I decided to do a rough count of all the animals that died to Shadow's gun on-screen. Mandy, across this entire terrifying campaign, from the first dead deer at 4:09 till the death of the Lion Emperor at 43:35, there were 45 wolves, 3 deer, 67 african buffalo, 27 leopards, 4 antelope, 28 normal lions, 9 birds, 18 hyenas, 25 baboons, 11 mountain lions, one Rhino/bat/moose/hippo/warthog, and about 28 black lions (about 21 of which were dead within the first minute after you properly encountered one). I don't think it's reasonably possible to estimate the countless animals slain off-screen. I'm pretty sure that this hunt would count as a warcrime in some jurisdictions. Congrats.

As soon as I realised that Jacob was voiced by Yujiro Hanma my experience watching this was changed entirely. I think this might be the best game I have never played.

The Cabela's game were some of my favorites as a kid. The morality never dawned on me, I thought the animals were cool enemies. I even had their more simulator focused games as well. This unlocked a core memory.

"I saw the impala reaching" was low-key gold

The wild shooting into the trees and leopards falling out is too much. this game is insane

You're taking a leisurely stroll through the Alaskan mountains with your brother and father when all of a sudden. 36:36 You hear him cry out. Goku.

"Cecill the lion might have had aoe attacks and multiple phases, idk" *hunter takes aim at cecil* *cecil turns his head towards the scope and his eyes turn red* "Cmon then, lets dance!!!" -guitar riff plays-

Mandalores comedic instincts are always on point but this one had me falling out of my chair. "Howls Moving Castle Doctrine" "They're trying to steal our decals" "I saw the impala reaching" simply masterful

In this universe, 'conservationist' means he's conserving humanity FROM the animals.

He's a conservationist of extinction. Making sure extinction doesn't go extinct.

I love how insane this is. It’s like House of the dead/arcade shooter pretending to be a hunting sim. 10/10 video

Not since Detective Halligan have I seen a game protag with problem-solving instincts that are so wildly at odds with their chosen work. I love it.

Nothing could have prepared me for this game to be this years Halloween video from mandy

I genuinely don't think that whatever storm of ideas that lead to this game could ever be done again and be more entertaining than it is. It's completely insane, but not only the best kind of insane, it's also completely sincere in its insanity.

I want this to be the inspiration for a WH40k hunting game where you're a Catachan protecting his village from the rest of the planet. It would be perfect. Maybe add in a tyrranid invasion as a mid-game speedbump / easy mode.

You’ve clearly never played Cabela's Original Sins, where Jacob accidentally destroys a totem of nature, forever marking him as an enemy to all life in Uganda.

The scariest/best thing is this isn't even the only Cabela's game like this, there's at least one other that also opens with a father and sons hunting trip and ends with a Resident Evil-esque segment through a facility that was trying to train baboons to be soldiers. The only reason I realized this wasn't that game was because Mandalore didn't mention the player character vacuuming up the skulls of his enemies for health.

"Are you a conservationist, yes because you are Jacob or are you trashed off Antivenom because you are a conservationist, yes?" Jacob: Nah, I'd hunt.

In Aztec Myth, it's said that the world ended multiple times. One of those ends was caused by Jaguars flooding the world. I like to think Jacob lives in that world. Explains this game.

I don't know if it's connected lorewise at all, but Cabela's Survival: Shadows of Katmai has you stranded in the Alaskan wilderness while fighting a hyper intelligent genetically engineered super bear that pursues you like Nemesis.

“I saw the impala reaching” has to be your best line yet.

As someone who's been at multiple Cabela's, multiple times, *I can confirm I've seen at least 1 Eldritch baboon*