What does Cruelty Squad Believe In?

[Music] cruelty squad is well you know what this isn't the sort of game that really gets an opening paragraph i could tell you about how weird the visuals are or the music or the gameplay or the story but i mean really just look at this thing 10 seconds of gameplay footage and you'll immediately see all of that for yourself i'll be totally real with you guys if you're looking for a cruelty squad ending explained or some sort of lore analysis i really don't have too much to offer you i can't really explain what literally happens in the different endings but this game is just so in tune with how i feel about a lot of things so while i can't explain what these endings are i think i can explain what these endings mean at least so stay tuned i had never bothered looking into this game until one day i installed it and went in completely blind before i even started the first level i was just thinking yep this game gets it when i play a new game what i'm really looking for beyond super smooth gameplay a great story or even the deeper ludological substance i tend to talk about on this channel is a feeling i want to feel things that i've never felt before and cruelty squad delivers i'm going to start with a particular moment that's fresh on my mind at the time of writing i was in a nightclub level talking to random npcs when one of them just said when the beat drops i'm going to [ __ ] kill myself while this is exactly the kind of deadpan black comedy that fits perfectly in a game like this it goes a bit deeper than that for me a line like this is a perfect microcosm of what this game is really about for me or at least what its main motif is cruelty squad is for me halfway about this absolutely horrific corporate dystopian future where all of existence has been commoditized and halfway about well growing up or more specifically how mundane life can become as you grow up i know that sounds weird and off kilter and like i might just be pulling it out of my ass but well welcome to lead head seriously though while i can't speak for everybody my experiences entering my 20s and slowly figuring out what the rest of my life might look like was something i was relating to this game the entire way through playing it so let's go back to that line when the beat drops i'm going to [ __ ] kill myself what on earth does that have to do with growing up well it all starts with the third most inevitable thing in life boredom me i'm very much into the unknown hitting the second half of my teens i started to see so many people around me talking about and preparing for their careers they were already talking about what fields they were going to go into and what kind of a person they were going to be like they already knew what the next 60 years of their lives were going to look like that's all well and good for them i hope they keep chasing those dreams to the ends of the earth but that's just not how i operated nothing in the world was scarier to me than knowing what i would be doing in 20 years and in a way that's still true i'll quit talking about myself and get more into the game soon and explain what the hell all of this has to do with house music and suicide but i think it's important for you all to see where i'm coming from in a video like this basically it feels like i've spent my whole life just running from boredom when i first started youtube it was this new mysterious adventure for me i had no idea what my life would be like today the pipe dream was always that my channel would eventually blow up and i could do it full time but once that happened and i switched to full time i was hit with an unexpected wave of depression suddenly practically overnight with how quickly my channel blew up that wide fascinating array of possible futures i might end up living turned into a single cold hard fact i stopped being this person who never knew what was around the next corner and i became a youtuber now this thing's still an adventure for me i still have a lot of things to learn about being a youtuber but slowly the reality is set in that this is my life now and that it'll be a very long time before i have a month that's drastically different from the last i'm starting to get a better idea of what my house might look like in 20 years what kind of a car i'll be driving what kind of a person i'll be and as i get a better and better grasp on my future that future seems more and more boring to me boredom it's what happens when things that used to be exciting or interesting start to make you feel absolutely nothing that's what that line is for me it's about being in a fun exciting situation like a party at a nightclub and feeling absolutely nothing not anger or sadness or contempt but nothing pure boredom when the beat drops i'm going to [ __ ] kill myself this sort of idea can be applied to a whole lot of what's inside of cruelty squad and the game as a whole it's this absolute assault on the senses that by the time you're done all feels strangely mundane yeah i'm a walking corpse that uses an external intestine as a grappling hook and shoots pus out of giant pores on my back and feet to get around more quickly i eat moldy pizzas and dead bodies for sustenance i kill and collect organs indiscriminately i've made hundreds of thousands of dollars on the stock market i go through horrific surgeries on a daily basis my already dead body is destroyed dozens of times a day by angry humanoid things that want to shoot me all of my senses have been numbed to the point where the world is just a blur of colors and emotionless faces grunting ideas of me and yet by the end of the game all of these things are just the facts of life to me that's what my life is nothing new or interesting about today's drug-fueled mass murder compared to yesterday's or tomorrow's cruelty squad is all about starting your first day on a new job excited at the interesting new world that lies before you before that job slowly becomes a grind a suicidal thought-provokingly expected grind now don't get me wrong this game is ridiculously entertaining from beginning to end even after unlocking nearly every item in the game not once was i the player board but every single person around me treated this situation like it was so boring npcs barely react at all when i run up to them a pus leaking monstrosity waving a gun around and say hi enemies just walking a straight line towards me the people i kill are somewhat canonically reanimated the next day without a care in the world hell when i kill a target's entire security force in a hail of gunfire and kick the door of his office down gun in hand they usually just tell me about how their day has been before i kill them one guy even thanked me for listening since he never gets to talk about this kind of stuff with his colleagues a hired gun shooting up an entire building is just treated like another day at the office for these people i mean hell at one point you're tasked with killing a cartel leader and when you see him this is what he looks like and nobody acts like this is strange at all this insane and interesting world is treated like it's so meh on that note even the main menu of the game is just some random guy sitting in a car with his head blown off while the camera just idly bobs around as if to say yeah whatever the splash screen promotes a company called consumer soft products the utter unfiltered insanity of this game was brought to us not by new blood or by supergiant or by devolver digital but by consumer soft products everything about this game is just treated like it's so boring for everyone involved this would be like if a terrorist organization called themselves schumacher general materials handling like just look at what you get when you boot up the game [Music] that weird feeling you get when you watch that is exactly what i'm talking about the game even before you start it is foreshadowing the idea that this utter insanity has become totally mundane totally boring in this world there's only one section of the game that i can think of where anybody acts like anything that's going on is out of the ordinary the archon grid basically we're put into this in-universe video game gorbino's quest yeah see there he is a couple npcs think that the world is ending and that's pretty much all you hear about this being weird the visuals go from being twisted to being full-blown abstract nothing in this level makes any sense from a real world perspective everything is just totally unreal see these previous levels they're insane looking but they're all representing real places this is an ocean this is a fish tank this is an office building's lobby all of that goes out the window at the archon grid okay so this is where the game goes from weird to really weird but i think i have an explanation so lore wise i have absolutely no idea what's going on i'm not even going to begin to speculate on how killing some ceos and cult leaders and whatnot led to the world becoming a video game but what i can tell you is that this sort of represents you getting out of the campaign this is the last normal level so you've finished the quote-unquote story mode and now it's time for you to start treating this like a video game that's why this finale is well a video game it's time for you to start going into old levels you've already finished and looking for secrets unlocking secret levels new weapons hidden implants grinding for money and seriously breaking this game importantly this is also the level where you get your divine light back which you'll be doing a lot as you hunt for secrets okay so the divine light basically when you first start the game your screen's border looks like this but after you die three or four times the border changes to this when the border looks like this there are a whole bunch of doors that you can't open which lead to secret areas and unlocks you stay unable to open these doors until you start archon grid and reconnect with the divine light and like before it goes away once you die what this means is that once you've finished the main levels in this game you'll be constantly returning to the level that is literally a video game in order to help you do the most video gamey thing that you do in this game breaking the timeline by returning to past levels in order to hunt for secrets so that's the sort of idea that i like to just throw out there and let you guys roll with or reject but archon grid features the first game's ending which like the others is just a bunch of cryptic text over relatively abstract visuals basically the text in ending number one can be summarized as you wake up to find yourself in a world where you're surrounded by opportunities and you generally feel good about this you've got a new understanding of the world around you but that understanding isn't complete and so you're trapped in this world unable to really make sense of it all that's more or less what the text literally says but i read it as good job you've just finished the game but there are still a whole bunch of levels you haven't unlocked and secrets you couldn't figure out you can replay old levels as much as you want so it's time to start using that weird divine light thing to start searching for more answers and more importantly you need to save up enough money to buy your own house in the mountains relating this back to my point about growing up this first ending would be the moment that you realize what your future is going to look like and start to see through the illusion of freedom you've got all of these opportunities around you but you're still trapped in this one somewhat linear course that you're never going to escape you're going to work your job and get a family and earn roughly xxx dollars per year and thus your life becomes a game in this case gorbino's quest i can't offer a literal explanation of what the hell actually happened when you killed that thing in arkhan grid but when literal analysis fails us we have to fall back on abstract analysis so buckle up we've still got two more endings to get through and they aren't going to be any more clear than this one so anyways with the fourth wall break that is archon grid under my belt i can acknowledge that this is finally a video game and start breaking the timeline to hunt for secrets sure i could have done that before but now that the quote-unquote final boss is dead that's all that there is to do so basically i wandered and googled around until eventually i found out how to get this one surgery that made me dead now that i'm dead i can survive the hallways in the cruelty squad hq level that lead to the second final boss and the second ending by the way you can't even open this door unless you've got the holy scope or have changed your resolution to 640 by 480 in order to make this one secret on the same level visible basically you throw yourself at the ceo with a seemingly infinite supply of health and a gun that totally disables you after enough shots until eventually you come across a strategy that works for you in my case i took the ammunition gland and the blast armor meaning i had essentially infinite ammo and could rocket jump iraq jumped up to this one pillar and spammed the toxic gas grenades at him until eventually finally he died i took his gun the dna scrambler and headed for the newly opened level exit with that we hit ending number two life has become a haze my life is going exactly how i envisioned it i have a 10-year plan i'm investing i've got the ceo mindset basically what this ending is saying is that i've destroyed everything i ever was and the pursuit of success wealth and fulfillment and that i should be proud because i'm well on my way to being a truly powerful businessman like i always dreamed so yeah literally that's what's happening i've killed myself i've completely mingled my corpse through countless surgeries i've killed indiscriminately all leading up to this world's equivalent of a bureaucratic battle between me and my old boss in order to get here i acknowledge the gaminess of the game and turned my life into gorbino's quest as i revisited old levels looked up ways to grind for money hunted for ridiculously cryptic secrets i destroyed my body and gave up on any delusion that this whole grind would lead to anything other than more cruelty squad i gave up on any delusion that my life would lead to anything other than more life to get a little bit more to the point i lost everything that i loved in pursuit of more of what i loved and life has become this weird darkly surreal memory staring at me through a fog which built up in the years it took me to get to this point i've become autonomous and all i really know is to keep doing what i'm doing this isn't being alive i've become a machine driven by the fulfillment of a dream that i used to have i don't know maybe it's just me but well yeah between these two endings that's pretty much how growing up has felt for me so far but enough about me what happens next now that i've got my 10-year plan in place and have started investing and adopting that ceo mindset what happens now that my dreams of a nice home in the hills are so close to fulfillment well i guess it's time to go unlock and play all of those secret levels i grind and i grind and i grind existing as a machine driven by the divine light of success in my goals to touch back on the divine light for a moment if my interpretation of the lore is correct the divine light is more or less a connection to that ceo mindset that drove this world to the insanity that it is basically when you're severed from the divine light from dying you get a message saying you are a flesh automaton animated by neurotransmitters so a human basically the way i interpret this the divine light is a force that takes over our character's mind and forces him down the path of the ceo destroying himself for the sake of prophets and career advancement so basically the divine light does to the player character exactly what life does to so many people in the real world it forces us down a destructive path that we convince ourselves we still want to follow and romanticizes the [ __ ] out of that path telling us that we're noble for following it relating this back to my last point about the divine light i'd say that this lines up pretty well with what i was saying about how we have to go back to the video game level archon grid to reconnect with the divine light i have to acknowledge that my life has turned into a game in order to continue dissociating from it and pursuing my goals anyways like i said i'm clearing out all of these secret levels basically just looking for my lucky break my shot at the 1 million dollars i'll need in order to buy my own house in the hills and retire on the very last of the normal secret levels i found a bank i could stick up and finally i got my million i had beaten every challenge that this game had thrown at me and now i can finally move into my new home free of landlords and murder and horrific surgeries i've won capitalism and i can ascend well that's what the dream always was but now that i'm here i see three target indicators i guess i've gotta kill some more people house is really the level that made me decide to take this video in this direction story wise this isn't a mission nobody told me to kill these people nobody told me who my targets were or why they needed to die all that anyone told me was that i finally got a house and i'm living the dream and that i can enjoy the good life now i don't really know what i was expecting to find when i loaded up this level but three targets placed even more cold and sterilely than the targets i'd taken down before this point sure wasn't it like i said this moment was kind of where this analysis started then much to my satisfaction all of the other pieces kind of fell into place why am i doing the exact same [ __ ] i was doing before now that i've retired and am supposed to be living the good life well again there isn't really a lore reason that i can discern talking to these people it seems like they didn't really do anything wrong they're just kind of weird and the neighbor that i killed for literally no reason sure didn't do anything wrong either well to answer that question let's look at what killing in this game really represents it's just the grind long ago i had a dream and in this game killing was the way to achieve that dream i whittled my consciousness down to the point where all i had was the dream and now that i've retired i have nothing but a fulfilled dream and no consciousness to enjoy it with basically through the mundanity that came with my life going basically more or less how i always hoped it would getting my own home has just become another step in the 100 year plan i feel nothing now that i'm here just more killing more of the grind another step in the path it turns out though that this house wasn't the end of the road death was the end of the road and this house was just one more painfully expected bend in that road so basically we kill people on this level because getting a home has just become another step in the life plan we arranged ourselves but once it's all done something new and unexpected happens turns out this isn't the end of the game not yet with the completion of house i've now finished every single level in the game and so i unlocked one last level trauma loop the true and final ending to cruelty squad [Applause] [Music] okay so this one is a lot a whole lot i'd like to analyze this ending panel by panel because there's just too much going on here for a cliff notes version like on the previous two endings but to give you a quick introduction basically you know how they say that your entire life flashes before your eyes right before you die well to me this last ending is basically one of the most horrifying concepts i can imagine i'm on my deathbed and my entire life is flashing before my eyes and i'm utterly bored by the presentation then a couple short bursts of philosophical thoughts following this revelation in my final seconds through the years and years of planning and watching as things went more or less according to that plan my senses have become dulled to my very existence life has become nothing but a game that got spoiled for me a long long time ago so let's start with that first page of text i won't waste the familiar viewers time reading it out you can pause the video and read if you'd like but basically we see all of these quickly flashing images your life flashing before your eyes and we eventually land on the first wall of text a point in the horizon a melting scene from your childhood your mortality is showing so like i said i'm dying and i'm seeing my life flash before my eyes as i dive in and let the memories wash over me i remember the point where i gave up on finding anything unfamiliar in this world and realized that i would spend the rest of my life on this track i'm a high net worth individual i've become a pure soul the kind of person i always wanted to be a ceo a business mogul a beautiful [ __ ] nerve ape i'm finally confirmed to be human you can tell because i've spent all of this time on a single linear life path then on the next screen the value of life is negative the balance of being is rotated by 38 degrees suddenly i get a new perspective on life i'm now experiencing something that i never thought i'd experience again novelty i'm thinking a thought that i never thought before from this new perspective everyone and everything around me is toppling downhill but i'm moving upwards everyone around me went through life without a goal or an ambition but through my pristine idiocy that was merely following a path i decided on 60 years before i was able to scoot through life in a way that the people around me weren't with this newfound perspective i come to a revelation i pick up the onion of my existence and start peeling it i start applying this newfound perspective to my memories of my whole life over what feels like eons i peel away at the life onion until there's absolutely nothing left i've gone over my existence with a fine-tooth comb searching for any feelings i might have missed out on now it's done the onion is completely gone and there's nothing left for me to feel then i finish my final thought and i let myself die [Music] now that i'm dead the game ends with a quote from french philosopher george battaglia the living organism in a situation determined by the play of energy on the surface of the globe a human ordinarily receives more energy than is necessary for maintaining life the excess energy wealth can be used for the growth of a system the human if the system can no longer grow or if the excess cannot be completely absorbed in its growth it must necessarily be lost without profit it must be spent willingly or not gloriously or catastrophically basically humans are limited creatures we only get to live one life while we may be surrounded by opportunities throughout our life we only get to take a few of them we're locked into a single story and we're forced to watch as all of these opportunities around us this excess energy is wasted from this perspective life is nothing but a dream a dream that's built on a couple of key decisions and a mass grave of missed opportunities as humans progress through life their scope gets narrower and narrower you start out having no idea what your future will look like this whole world is an ocean of possibilities and opportunities and they're all so incredibly fascinating to you but then slowly as you age you start to zero in on a single path through life and as you watch the opportunities that aren't relevant to your goals pass around you that path gets clearer and clearer until eventually it's the only thing you can really think about or truly understand you manage to turn all of these opportunities around you into annoying distractions you distance yourself from the world around you just to make your own world a little bit smaller a little bit more focused when the beat drops i'm going to [ __ ] kill myself death for most people isn't a sudden thing it's a gradual deterioration of your senses that starts the moment you're born slowly the world around you fades and narrows and fades and narrows until eventually there's nothing [Applause] [Music] [Music] before i close out this week's video and get to playing another even more headache-inducing first-person shooter i just like to go ahead and verbally thank my patrons especially those who have been donating 10 or more monthly such as ada avery almost dead again anatoly volnov andrew melnick benny big time jim bobby blitz cj keane champiow christopher piner colin gaijic darius fazier david kaiser dennis foshakumar dominic johann duncan bristow fralem ijk jack eisenberg kenneth infinger laffy mixer rules neurofilter pj raptor racks fan robert scotty from marketing ceelo vivian cox what's razzie keen vo yemen she and zyroblee thanks everybody and have a great week

Channel: Leadhead

Views: 192,205

Keywords: analysis, explained, essay, review, ending, hope, life, trapped, CEO, mindset, secret, meaning, message, believe, in, trippy, LSD, Acid

Id: 6fT_6DwMpBc

Length: 23min 47sec (1427 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 24 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/aflyingtaco]

God this video was great.