If you want to hear more about horror games, sounds, and any song with strings, I'll be releasing a full-length video commentary for this essay on Patreon: www.patreon.com/JacobGeller

I don’t think horror works without empathy.

The audio: I lay there and watched the god I had created die. The screen: Dickslapper666

A few years back my girlfriend was killed in a car accident, I was able to walk away from a 70 mph car crash and for a while the survivor's guilt led me to drinking heavily and distancing myself from a lot of people. Out of the blue I decided to stream on KZfaq and started a playthrough of silent hill 2. Playing through the game and having anonymous people to talk to really helped me out of a tough time. My first time playing SH2 I didn't realize there were more endings and I thought it was just the in water ending. Being able to play the game as James learning to let go of his wife and allowing himself to move on for the good ending really resonated with me and to this day everytime I here the songs from that game I can't help but get emotional.

“It can’t be horror all the time. you have to give players a safe spot to rest” Dead space monsters posing as corpses to jumpscare you front of save stations: allow us to introduce ourselves

I feel like you're missing the point with Claire de Lune in Evil Within. They didn't just throw in some pleasant-sounding music, they picked a real-world classical piece to play in a creepy asylum. It's not just game music that only the player hears, it's being played IN the asylum, over the speakers. It's intentional tonal dissonance; the room itself may be safe, but it doesn't _feel_ safe, it feels sinister and morbid. The inclusion of a calm, lilting classical piece puts that feeling in stark relief. You don't feel calm, you feel like you're _being_ calmed, like a doctor telling you "this won't hurt a bit" before sliding a needle into your vein. That makes it far more unsettling than any deliberately creepy music could accomplish.

"The world is a machine for pigs. We are all pigs" ... "Special K ceral is bursting with strawberries!"

I had a similar experience with Death Stranding. Without spoiling it, there’s a song hinted at throughout the game and the player finally hears it in its entirety in a crucial moment in the plot. Hell, the song was even hinted at in some trailers, before the game was out. Damn Kojima.

I have a feeling Jacob would like the Music, *"Lillium"* from the show _"Elfen Lied"_

"The Evil Within 2 Deserved Better." ... Welp, guess I'm spending 20 dollars because Jacob Geller told me to.

There's no doubt in my mind that you have set a new standard for what a great video essay should be. Props, man.

This reminds me of when I first found Eurydice when playing Hades. I went from desperately fighting for my life between lava pools and entered an unknown room and was met with the beautiful voice singing of the sweet release of death. I stopped and listened to the entire song before I touched my controls again.

I'll be honest... every time I hear clair de lune, I remember The Evil Within, a game while not necessarily perfect it still has a special place in my heart.

Jacob, you've officially made my list of "can't sleep play a calming video" creators. The highest honor.

The Japanese have a term for this feeling; Mono no aware. It describes the feeling of knowing this moment is not permanent. Nothing is, nor will it ever be. Your happiest moment, your deepest despair. This too, shall pass. I think these pieces evoke that feeling. The knowing of time, the deep understanding that your best efforts, even your life, is futile in the face of time, in the grand scheme of the entropy of the universe. But I believe there is also a hope in this, some kind of happy joy to be had to know that none of this really matters, that we are the universe experiencing itself, and what else is there to do but experience it all?

I just love your way with words, talk about a great inspiration. Your writing elevates any subject! Much love from Brazil.

Akira Yamaoka is a fucking genius, after so many years still listening to the entire SH soundtrack.

What you feel is what Portuguese speakers call "saudade". A longing for something or someone, but also a longing for the feeling you have when you're with that said person/thing. You can have saudade of a town, but it's not only by longing to be in this town, but the feelings and memories you have in this town. Same goes to the person, you long to meet someone, but you long to meet someone because of the experiences and the love and the memories you have for someone. And saudade is something that happens the most when something is outreach, you don't necessarily can have those experiences or memories or love, it can be out of your reach so you have saudades of it

Ever played Darkwood? After surviving a night, time freezes, any enemies who invaded your house vanish, the daily merchant appears and you get time to repair your defenses, and it all lasts until you leave your house so there is no stress or time limit. All the while this beautiful track plays in the background.

5:10 "I also find it fascinating that the contrast to horror isn't happy, either, it isn't bright and bouncy. Happy music is just distorted by the scares. Instead, it's just a return, to something like, neutral." I'm a survivor of a 7 year long trauma before I was old enough to have a childhood. I'm plagued with several mental disorders, illnesses, and neurological conditions. This includes depression, anxiety, PTSD, and several others still. This really speaks to me for some reason. I've had an aversion to happy music and happiness in general since I've been through it all, and come out alive. I've tried to tell myself "you need to be happy" but I don't want to be happy. I want neutrality. I want to be safe. I don't want a smile across my face 24/7, I want peace. Without fear or pain, I want solace. I think that this line is enough to explain why I love good horror audio design. When the contrast is happiness, it's merely distorted and wrong, when the contrast is solace and peace, it's much more effective at putting you in their place. Thank you for allowing me to have some insight into myself as well

I had the pleasure of seeing Akira Yamaoka perform live in Sweden with a Silent Hill cover band. Hearing him jam out Theme of Laura was SICK

Finally Amnesia: a machine for pigs has gotten the recognition it deserves.

This channel is like thought-provoking, eye-opening, mind-blowing comfort food.

The “Mandus” piece along with the machine’s pleading made up for all the stupid parts of that game. I get chills listening to it now. Like you said, the inevitability is captured.

"They will make pigs of you all." *cries

Finally, someone talks about A Machine for Pigs in a positive way. What makes this game so special to me though; Is the voice acting. The protagonist and the antagonist have such stellar performances. I encourage everyone to look up a compilation of all the voice lines on KZfaq.

Jacob: we are all pigs. Ad: LET'S PLAY RAID SHADOW LEGENDS!

It's interesting because I grew up surrounded by classical musicians, so Claire de Lune played A LOT through my childhood, which made the safe room in The Evil Within cause a pretty deep-rooted "yearning for that other world" because while I'd be running for my life and scraping by to survive a giant spider lady with long hair and then suddenly hear that song playing, it was like "hey, you remember when you were a kid and you weren't actively being chased around by projections straight out of the mind of a serial killer?"

Machine of Pigs ending dialog and music is amazing. I never played the game, but in a University core class, "oral expression", every student had to recite in front of the class a poem, or monologue of his choosing as an assignment. Nearly everyone chooses the typical ones, from political to pop-culture, to social people. I'm a shy person, an Information and Industrial Civil engineer, and public speaking isn't my thing, but since i had to do it as an obligation for a grade, I decide to search for one in the video game space, which is what I enjoy, and i find this one, and i couldn't look away. Even if I didn't play the game, it was just so impactful, so real. I did need it to translate it to Spanish, as you can see English isn't my first language, and even if I can understand without problem, and I'm somewhat capable to write it, to some extend, my tongue is just stupid when I'm trying to talk it. But the result was close to it, and I did add emotion (i was nearly crying impersonating the machine, in a mix of desperation and anger plying to Mundus), and i receive the higher grade and the following ecstasy when doing something that you are not comfortable do in it. and yet, nearly 8 years since that presentation, i still remember close to 90% of the monologue, word by word. And the music. fuck, what an amazing sound. Every time i hear it, it make me somber, reminiscence of all the emotion on the monologue, and every part of my skin tingles. The same goes to silent hill. I've had played all of them, even the awful wii one. and the music, the soundtrack of each one, is just spectacular. cheers

I completed Everybody's Gone to the Rapture in one sitting, ended up going to bed at around 5AM, and it was an otherworldly, almost religious experience. I don't want to call it ''horror' but that most certainly is what we're seeing - humanity ended 32 minutes ago and we are an etheral "something" listening to the voices of those who have died - but it's more "despair" than horror. I loved each and every game by The Chinese Room (A Machine for Pigs, Dear Esther). So sad they don't exist anymore.

I'm never disappointed by your deep dives. Music is one of the most important things in my life, and the fact that I'm not the only one that cherishes it's presence really makes me feel a little less alone.

I've spent so many hours in the Hunter's Dream in Bloodborne, just sitting there, next to the doll. Just hearing a few bars of the Hunter's Dream Theme or the Moonlight Melody is enough to take me back.

Finally someone talks about THAT chapter in The Evil Within 2. The music injected me with so many emotions, it's a memory I'll never forget.

I swear to God when I ascended those stairs in the end of A Machine For Pigs, and that track started playing over the machines monologue. Never before have I experienced so many goosebumps.

The Machine's speech at the end of A Machine For Pigs gets me every... damn... time. The combination of the swelling music and the EMOTION that the Machine's voice carries is just... yeah.

For anyone interested in more of this kind of music, the genre is generally called 'dark ambient'

That ending music for "A machine for pigs" always gets me, so beautiful, that and the narrator's voice it's so immersive, so cinematic, when it makes you feel things you know it's well done

when you said "that's just art" at the end it made me realize what i want to do. i want to make art that makes people feel. provides massive worlds that make people want to explore, and fantasy places that make people wish they were true. and i want to accomplish that through pixel art, and massive canvas's. thanks. you've made me tear up a bit.

This helped me realize what I needed to understand about my own life. It'll never return to the simplicity my life once held. The future, no matter how awful, is inevitable, and trying to stop it from happening is a fools errand born from desperation. But even as everything descends into a broken hurricane of pain and misery, there will always be a place I can return to that's safe for me. I can always find... serenity.

This is exactly how I feel about Reflection in Hollow Knight, the theme that plays when you're sitting on a bench. Healing, saving, sorting things out... the whole time you've been fighting for your life, being surprised-attacked or almost trapped. But on that bench you're safe and you can finally breath. Whenever I hear that theme it brings me instant peace, but also this strange, deep sorrow. Like you said, longing.

Hi, Jacob. You'll probably never read this but in the off chance that you do, I want to say thank you. KZfaq has become such a deluge of things I don't care about and things that actively make me upset that it's always nice to just come back to one of your videos. It's like a safe place. A palette cleanse. Beautifully written, emotionally striking. Though I love the big three, I watched Mr. Beast and Pewdiepie, I love Yahtzee's reviews, and though I think Dunkey and Jakey can be surprisingly clever, - fact is, you're my favorite youtuber out all of them.

Horror game : we are scary and will ggive you trauma! everyone : ahh yes the melody is beautiful in my ears like a sunset

When you end with empathy, I find it revealing that horror games are where we find music that makes us more empathetic towards the characters. The necessity for players to empathize with a character in a horror game is more essential than in other games due to that being were part of the fear comes from. Not only do we not want to die and get a game over, but we also don't want the character to die. We want to see them get through this. It is also revealing that horror games are more often an example while other games are not.

The song "Mandas" in Machine for Pigs is something special. I've never played the game. This video essay is my only exposure. But just the clip played her brought me to tears the first time I watched. Every time I've listened since stirs an uneasy sadness in me, like I want to deny the hope that is intrinsically woven into the notes. Incredible.

So far, every time I'm like, "hmm this video might be interesting but it's not really my thing, let's put it on anyways" And every time, your videos are amazing. Well done

small thing, but when the mandus monologue's text came up i got chills because it was the same font you used in the anatomy video. weird how that through-line affected me

That Mandus track and monologue in game are extremely haunting. I didn't know the full extent of what deactivating the machine meant in my playthrough. Remarkable.

You summed up exactly how I felt about Resident Evil 7; I literally almost cried I was so relieved to hear the save theme. Just sitting in the dimly lit room, knowing you MUST go on sometime, but now you can rest. Its so good. Also, I love your thoughts on the Silent Hill games. Great video

I'm so thrilled to see Machine for Pigs getting the positive attention it deserves. I love it so much.

"Saw Future (Very Bad!!!)" "Created a Machine to End All Humanity (Not Great)" Your sense of morality is a little bit weird Jacob.

The Evil Within is so underrated. It's such a good game.

the song "not tomorrow" turns into really almost tells you that this wont be a pleasant experience. i've never played silent hill but i can feel the impending fear and weight of everything in it just in the song, and its SO good.

i love how jacob will make a masterpiece like this and then the patreon donors page is like ‘this video was made possible because of dickslapper666’

"Ozzy Mandus" ...I see what you did there, Amnesia. -_-

I love how easily you put all the subconscious thoughts in my head into THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WORDS

Brilliant video as always, and I'm particularly happy to see more appreciation for The Evil Within 2. Up there in the pantheon of art that suffered for the shortcomings of others, in this case its direct predecessor. Small note: Mikami didn't direct it, it was helmed by John Johanas, a designer from the first game. It was his first time directing a game and as a debut effort that's pretty impressive.

The most beautiful piece of game music I've heard, is the beginning of ori. It's when you watch the character you've rapidly bonded with die. Exhausted, in pain, utterly defeated, and alone.

how is jacob this good at the whole youtube thing?

You should play "The Shattering", a game about.... i won't spoil anything of it, its so good

I love how resident evil 7 used music and sounds to incite fear. Everything from insect noise to hearing ur own footsteps as u move into debris wondering if something else moved around you. Truly felt alone and desperate through most of the game.

I listened to Everywhere at the End of Time in one sitting once. I still experience... something akin to terror when I hear Just a Burning Memory, the first track in the work. Upon hitting the last album, the quiet emptiness was a relief from the mounting horror of the third, fourth and fifth albums. Listened to on its own, it might be eerie. Truth be told, I can't even remember what it sounds like. What I do remember is how it made me feel - it was, rather than whatever it might be on its own, it becomes a respite, a return to something else. Not normality, normality would be the ballroom jazz of the first album. Just something that isn't the relentless, overwhelming confusion and static of the third, fourth and fifth albums. The emptiness, after that grim, grinding noise, is a release. I have, on more than one occasion, said that Everywhere at the End of Time is probably the closest thing I will ever hear to horror as a genre of music.

Story: A man is driven to insanity by visions of a horrific future! Me: Meh, we've been here a hundred times. Story: The horrific future is literally just what happened in the 20th century. Me: Oh.

The theme’s in Resident Evil games are incredible. In Re2 Remake I’ve spent more time than I even realize just sitting in a safe room, waiting for Tyrant’s theme to dissipate. It always seems to scare me, it’s so strong and when you hear it you know you’re in trouble. The thing I love about RE7’s Safe Room theme is how even though it’s the safe theme, it’s still haunting and unnerving. You don’t feel safe, per se, but you feel safe-er. It still reminds you where you are, though, and that anything could be behind that door.

the evil within 2 is one of my favorite games. It always makes me happy to hear someone talk about it. that ending was amazingly well done.

because the sound design is actually involved during development whereas normally the sound desing gets an almost finished project and told here put some samples in this or whatever

My god, The New Century immediately brought tears to my eyes. I've never played a machine for pigs (hell, I never finished the dark descent), but something about the music just drew out this deep sadness. It almost sounds like somebody is breathing slow, staggering, yet sharp, breaths in the background; the kind of breaths one makes as they are faced with fear and grief. It's the same breaths I use to take during panic attacks in the middle of the night. It's the same breaths I took after crying over the loss of a loved one. It is the breath of despair, and it has been rendered in such awe inspiring beauty.

Silent Hill is by far my favorite horror series, and my 2nd favorite series ever. And the music is a LARGE portion of it. Laura's Theme kills me when I hear it. Akira Yamaoka is a god with music.

“The opposite of horror isn’t “happy”, it’s “safe” feels so obvious and yet having it spelled out like that blew my mind

I feel like the same applies to A Moments Peace from Dark Souls. The track is so tranquil and ethereal and it is only the menu theme. It really lulls you into a false sense of security and almost acts as respite from the rest of the game as you know what horrors you'll be expected to face going in. The title really speaks for itself and while Dark Souls isn't a horror game I still feel like it works really well at capturing that longing feeling and a mysterious atmosphere that's carried throughout the rest of the game.

Rarely do I watch a video that feels like it was pulled straight from the deep recesses of my thoughts. The places where I understand the thoughts as feelings or a smell connected to a memory that is just outside my field of view. Thanks for putting words to those parts of me. I know that's all a little fluffy and maybe cringy... but its true. I greatly appreciate your work. Well done.

That Resident Evil 4 tune is just so gentle and comforting.

I don't know why I have always imagined you as a "recently bar mitzva'd boy"

Around this time last year, I played through Amnesia: The Dark Descent, immediately followed by Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs. While I felt the gameplay was significantly stripped down in comparison to the first game (having no inventory was less than ideal, in my opinion), I do feel it had a much stronger theme and more hopeless tone. Its narrative was also pretty powerful. At the final culmination, I was just so overwhelmed with emotion from not only the score, but the sheer devastation involved in Mandus' fear. Excellently crafted as a piece of horror media, and pretty decent as a game.

"13-year-old... man" lmao

I went and listened to a random track off of Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture when you mentioned it. The song The Seventh Whistler. Thought it was nice at first, wistful sounding solo wind. Then when the ensemble joined in half way, I mean, god. It’s like my heart burst. I’ve been having a stressful time lately during a move, and I didn’t know I needed that cry. So thanks for that.

the first amnesia has the track "back hall" that has that same sort of comfort and rest. i distinctly remember it playing in the hall with the unusual fountain. its a nice reprise, especially considering the madness that the player goes through immediately before reaching that point.

This actually explains a lot about how I feel when playing Thumper. From the intense moments of one mistake leading to death and then feeling an immense calm after that intensity really does make Thumper a "Rhythm Horror" game. It doesn't keep me up at night with thoughts of being on an unending path with everything trying to kill me (or maybe it does). But rather, the moment by moment sensation of being one misstep away from failing can truly be horrific.

The Limbo chapter of Evil Within really reminds me of the ending of Journey. The slow climb up a snow-covered mountain while the sad strings play in the background. I wonder if they were inspired by Journey.

I absolutely love A Machine For Pigs and the Mandus monologue/song. I still get chills listening to it. Such a beautiful work of art. Thank you for talking about it. It's a criminally underrated horror game.

That part about the "stone egg" makes more sense if you've played The Dark Descent and know about the orbs (or what little we know about them).

Jacob, the writing you did for your dialog in this video was tremendous, the way you talked about the song at the end of Machine For Pigs, as well as the song at the end of Evil Within 2, made me think and feel things that are deep enough within me that they can be hard for me to reach most of the time. I think one of the reasons I've started binging all the videos on your channel is because the things you talk about feeling in all these videogames are emotions I relate to but have never heard articulated. You're making me more passionate about videogames and I thank you

Well, you know, I happen to very attached to Claire de Lune. So to me it sounds exactly like a wish for things to be different.

Thank you, sincerely, for talking about A Machine for Pigs to the extent you do in this video. It's one of my favorite horror games of all time, and almost nobody talks about it because it wasn't a jumpscare monstercloset KZfaqr Reaction Generator like its predecessor. It deserved so much better than it got, so if anyone's even mildly motivated to check it out after watching this, please do so. It'll stick with you.

Loved this video. So glad to hear Jessica Curry getting some appreciation. Everybody's Gone To The Rapture is one of my favourite games of all time, and the soundtrack is a large part of why. And as for The Evil Within 2... that music has haunted me ever since I first finished it a few months ago. That game was fantastic.

This is BY far my favorite video by you. I love the use of music and the sharing of personal stories. I feel I can hear the appreciation and astonishment in your voice.

I still stand by Amnesia: The Dark Descent as easily having one of the greatest soundtracks in a horror video game. At least to me. It's mixture of pure serenity, apprehensive reprieve, unnerving atmosphere, and utter anxiety and terror from one point to the next and everywhere in between just makes me feel every emotion even just by listening to the soundtrack alone. I've played the game and seen multiple playthroughs over the years, and the experience *never* gets old for me, simply for that reason.

I loved SOMA's soundtrack. The gameplay may haven't been that scary, but it still gives me chills everytime I listen to it.

The ending of Machine For Pigs always gives me chills. That music plus that speech is just sublime.

I know this is a comment late to the party but we've got to give Toby Longworth credit for his vocal performance in that ending monologue. Coupled with that rising song it's an brilliantly constructed scene.

Between the months when I first started to suffer from depression to my first therapy sessions, the Silent Hill soundtracks - especially Silent Hill 2 - got me through. It was some of the only music that I felt understood and sympathized with the hopelessness, despair, bitterness, nostalgic addiction, and complete surrender to fate that I was feeling.

I'm very happy to see A Machine for Pigs be given some attention again, it's a game I got after finishing the first one, the sense of defeating the horrors of The Dark Descent followed me into buying it and as I got it I didn't know what I was in for, slowly I realised this was not what I was expecting. It was something new though, something I have not seen before and it turned out to be the thing I needed the most. The ending broke me, I went up those stairs with tears flowing down my face and as the credits ended and all went silent I just sat there. Later that night I had a mental breakdown in the shower, crying, not even knowing why. But as I felt my mind leave me I saw what I needed to do, for so long I was ignoring it, the calling of my life. In short, I wanted to make art, but never truly dedicated myself to it and every time I saw an amazing animation or a great drawing, something would pull at my heart, this feeling of sadness I couldn't give a true name. That night I shattered. But from the fragments I started to rebuild myself and bit by bit, day by day, year by year I became whole again. Now, 3 years later, I may not be the master of art I wish to be, but I know I'm on my way with tons of work behind me, I am proud but most of all, finally happy. I can enjoy the work of other without my feelings pulling on me, I can now seek inspiration in the work of others rather than sadness. I can't thank A Machine for Pigs enough, though the story didn't really focus on this, it connected with me so deeply it became essential in my life. Who would think that facing your fears in a videogame would lead me to become the person I am today. I wouldn't back then, but now, well I can't not belive it. Again I'm extremely happy to see some cover of it, your entire video was great and I connected with it in a way I think you know way too well. I can't wait to cover this aspect of video games in one of my own videos later down the line. Thank you and have a great life Jacob.

When ever I hear Mandus score I always imagine a mad scientist walking through his laboratory as is burst in to flames slowly burning the fire growing larger the more the scientist walks through and reflects on his life’s work and as his stops and accepts his fate he is then slowly consumed by the flames

Each video on this channel is in contest for the best I've ever watched, however, this one is my personal favourite video on the platform. And just overall one of my favourite pieces of media I've ever consumed.

I hope I’m not the only adult man who cried like a baby when Lisa turned

When I need to make myself cry I play the Silent Hill soundtrack.

Great job man. The most memorable parts for me tend to be the sound design, music, and amazing dialogue or monologues from fantastic voice actors. That's why Transistor and SOMA are among my favorite games. And I think you captured that well here with the effective uses of beautiful music in horror games. God bless.

This video showed up on my feed for the first time today and I'm so glad it did - I love this so much. Bless you for having a whole Silent Hill section because goddamn, it's always beautiful.

Two songs that has that "the eye in the storm" feeling (for me): Majula in Dark Souls 2 and Firelink Shrine in Dark Souls 3

Probably my favorite part of gaming is often taking a moment to absorb the atmosphere of the worlds, and the score is a huge part of that. A shame I'm too chicken-shit to brave most horror games 😅

I played Amnesia a Machine For Pigs because I got so curious after watching your video, I’m totally obsessed now. The soundtrack hunts me as much as the question of “what would I do in Mandus place?” I think that is absolutely incredible how video games can open so many questions and create conversations as much as universes of infinite possibilities. Thank you so much for your work and dedication!!