Time loops are a weird genre for an anxious time

What would you do if you were stuck in a time loop?

Good video for the most part. But was the spoiler for Inscryption really necessary?

Easily the best Polygon video I’ve watched

OUTER WILDS MENTIONED 🫵🫵🫵🫵🫵

I was surprised that OXENFREE wasn’t mentioned in the video, but great video nonetheless! Time loops always have a special place in my heart with it’s message on how the past is unable to be changed. Love it 😊

sometimes i see a video that i like the premise of so much that it's hard for me to watch bc i think i'll get so excited that my head will pop like a balloon. i love time loops so much and i've loved them for years this video is so good

really makes me appreciate drakenier series as all endings end up being canon, just different timelines diverging

"rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead isn't a timeloop story" it would be if you weren't a fucking coward /j

i love videogame grandma

Long live the Queen is another game that matches this genre. Not explicitly a time loop game, but the goal is just to not be assassinated and you repeat your choices on a loop until you have enough information to not die.

Should probably have a spoiler alert for the Stanley Parable

So awesome that you interviewed Janet H. Murray for this! She's a regular cite for me.

I miss Jenna so much already :(

This is such a good video. They shouldn't have laid off Jenna

Elsinore is a t r i p

im not sure how this all fits into the puzzle so to speak but i also feel like a big part of time loop stories for me is an intersection with power of love. i want to be able to find the canon ending, or at least in the stories where not everything can be saved, the ending i feel is better than nothing, by trusting in those around me. we may not have all the power and information to make things work the first time, and maybe even the structure of the time loop itself is keeping us from remembering the information we need to survive; regardless, i want to believe that as long as we trust in, rely upon, and love each other, we can figure it out together. that is a huuuuuge part of time loops for me.

Okay, I was 1000% not prepared for this video. There's a time loop adventure game about Hamlet that I haven't heard of??? It's got gay???? And then you go and pick a not particularly famous but one of the gayest Hamlets to use as an example, just to murder me.

(Also Elsinore's existence is giving me an existential crisis because I've been working on alternate/branching narrative adaptations of Hamlet for literal years now and umm I think I need to have a lie-down.)

"*can* __ be art?" is a dumb question; the answer is and will always be "categorically and ubiquitously, yes."

My favourite series is a time loop based story unfortunately it’s a multimedia project that is so fucking impossible to recommend to anyone ever

I've only watched a third of the videos so far but it reminds me of this book I got at the library when I was a kid, called Meanwhile; it was a graphic novel choose-your-own adventure involving a machine that could either kill whoever was in it or send them back in time

the infamous headspace to receive information that could potentially hurt me 🙃

Come to think of it, poor Meatboy is older than us all.

clicked on the video and immediately checked the date just to make sure

Hey!
Steins;Gate, one of the best time loops out there, is not about having enough information to get out of a of a bad situation. In the original world, there is no big problem. It's our characters' meddling that cause the time loop of doomed timelines.

The solution isn't to become omniscient, because even with more knowledge, whatever he does, Okabe cannot save his friend and is doomed to watch her die.

The solution is to connect with the world, with your friends, find hope again, and defy fate in an epic turnaround! Have the means and the will to save your life.

It is overall a much more optimistic outlook on life.

Polygon you guys are killing it keep it up damn

I've never doom scrolled and I don't get overly anxious when I read or get told bad news. Is this a zoomer thing? Or is this a personal thing? Or is this just a result of not living in the hell hole USA? Idk

Now I kinda want to see a time loop game that turns this on it's head. Where the more obsessively you search for the right piece of information to get the one right ending, the worse the endings you get. One where the first ending is the best one you could get, where the moral, the message of the game is not to obsess, or give in to the anxiety, but to accept the reality for what it is.

I just gotta say that it is intensely surreal to watch someone who looks so much like my dear old grandma - whose experience with videogames begins and ends with Solitaire on Windows 95 - talk about time-loops and alternate realities as applied to modern videogame aesthetics and philosophy.

Kind of reminds me of that time when I discovered that the most powerful and influential guild in a game I was playing a lot at the time was run by a lady with a very similar age and background to my mum. On the one hand, thinking of my mum as an elite-tier gamer was just WEIRD, though on the bright side, I was able to barter my way to an officer's rank within the guild by leveraging some of my mom's home-made cake-recipes...

I wonder if these people really are that out of the ordinary, though, or if my family is just a bit behind the curve. >_>

Can’t remember if I commented on here last time I watched this video, but I loved it & the Elsinore focus! Such a great game.

I was wondering when Undertale was going to be brought up for the whole video, only to be suddenly rewarded with the catharsis of seeing it mentioned, the regret that it was merely in passing, and the sting of betrayal from "Flowery". Truly, this is the worst possible outcome. Perhaps, if I were to watch this video again, it could happen differently...

if u like narratives with timeloops that involve u as a person who is engaging with the media may i suggest the webnovel omniscent readers viewpoint. i cant say much without spoiling it but its a long story that sticks the landing in a phenomenal way - although it starts as a typical isekai it develops in a way that is so facinating and explores typical tropes in a really interesting way. its really good read orv

Partway through the video I realized you missed a GOLDEN opportunity to say, "But first, we need to talk about Parallel Universes."

Who are both guests present in this episode?

This made me think of the hook to the song "daylight" by Aesop Rock:
"All I ever wanted was to pick apart the day
Put the pieces back together my way"

this video contains spoilers for outer wilds! do yourself a favor and play through the game before you watch this

ANXIETY

You didn't need to give me anxiety, I already had it.

fantastic, thought-provoking discussion of media as usual <3

I wonder if there can be different levels on meta awareness for NPC’s. Like you understand destiny, then understand narrative, then understand the specific medium, then understand the world beyond the medium and its differences to ones own.

Jenna,
Thank you.
I'm so glad this was said.
And you said it with such graceful gustow.
We benefit from your brain.
Please be well.
Alex

I so badly want someone at Polygon to play the Pathologic games. I feel like there's so much they could do with it. It's got time-loops, performance as a frame narrative, direct addressing of the player, plague, sacrifice and selfishness...

My sister and I have a pact that if one of us tells the other that they're stuck in a time loop, we HAVE to believe them

i love this video deeeeeply. thanks for verbalizing something that's hard to explain!

This was a super interesting watch! Also, I'm loving the inclusion of actual experts in the field. Hearing from game devs and academics is refreshing in this weird world we are living in today.

love how she refers to spaghetti westerns as “Cowboy Italy”

I dig it!

Thank you for this video

GAME OVER YEAAAAAAAAH

I LOVE Run Lola Run, and ARQ is also one of my favorite films. I think both did a great job taking the time-loop concept and spinning it in a unique way. Time is fun!