What Went Wrong? - Hello Neighbor

over-hyped with a lot of bugs frustratingly nonsensical puzzles annoying parkour and lore that's way too deep for its own good this is what went wrong with hello neighbor where we take a look into the decline behind this game that started off with a promising concept that eventually turned into a bit of a letdown i'm wicked wiz being a man of my word and standing on my head i want to give a massive thanks to my patrons who didn't snitch on me after i broke into this guy's house and stole all of his kiln i played through all alphas of this game as well as the full release so you don't have to for a time this game was very hyped you may have noticed at some point between mid-2016 and 2017 that a lot of big content creators in the horror game genre would play this game called hello neighbor but then all of a sudden it just disappeared and people moved on to the next big thing you might think it was out boredom or something better came along and in all honesty that's part of the case however the true reason as to what went wrong lies deep within the game design itself so let's take a look at the versions of this game and the final release the concept of the game is pretty straightforward there's this suspicious looking man next door with a big chin and a mustache who's hiding something in their basement but hiding what you may ask well that's where you come in to investigate break into this man's house solve puzzles find key items pun intended and open up his basement door it's one of those cat and mouse type games where this is one big bad guy who you need to avoid for most of the time sometimes confront and put yourself at risk to figure out what the hell is going on the ai of the neighbor is or was arguably one of the main selling points to this game what makes this guy special is a combination of four different states typically at the beginning of the game he's in an idol state if he doesn't know you're in his house he'll just go about his business watch tv get food work out go to sleep and so on this is where you're the safest of course but if you knock something over or make a ruckus then that's when he switches into hunt mode in this mode the neighbor will go to wherever you made the noise and assess the situation once he's confirmed that someone's in the house he'll be looking for them and if he finds you he switches into attack mode this is when you run and you run like hell because this guy will chase after you relentlessly you could throw objects at him to slow him down but unless you're well skilled at the game you'll probably get caught and thrown out of the house after he catches you the ai switches into offline mode as you can see on screen there are all these little numbers these are key points if you were to let's say hide in this closet too many times then the neighbor will most likely check that closet the next time around and you're done for better yet he also leaves traps around the house in key points with a lot of activity these can be bear traps water buckets on a door or he'll just straight up block an entrance and just set up cameras this is your punishment for getting caught each time the ai gets smarter and your approach to entry gets harder with that said about the game so far you're probably wondering what the hell went wrong if you were like me and only saw the massive hype for the game back in the day then you'd probably assume that it was a big success and to be honest it was and arguably still is this isn't just a game it's more of a brand a franchise with a tv series books even board games coming out as well as other games that may or may not be related to the main plots such as this one where you just build vehicles for some reason nothing else it's it's just branded in hello neighbor but to be clear this video is focusing on the original hello neighbor and oh boy there's a lot to learn from what went wrong here initial development of hello neighbor appeared to start sometime between 2013 to 2014 by a russian game company called dynamic pixels founded in 2004 with prior experience mostly in tamagotchi style games with a portfolio largely centered around games like this the jump to something more ambitious like hello neighbor is an important note to take into account yet it was clear that these guys had the capacity to build something truly unique because sometime in 2014 multiple gameplay demos came out showing a very early concept of what appeared to be a break in and enter style game system looking at the footage on screen right now you can see that although there are no textures the concept is pretty damn solid you can see the player setting off distractions breaking into the house and eventually being chased by a main aki who will stop at nothing to catch you in this demo there's this moment that honestly sold the concept to both myself and most likely a lot of people the player goes into a room and blocks the door completely unsure what to do next until this happens [Music] [Music] it's clear that there's something to get excited about here and around two years later we get a real taste for the game in 2016 four alpha builds came out this would be about the same time where the game would gain a lot of popularity especially on youtube as dynamic pixels would give out a bunch of alpha keys to any youtubers that would take them the pre-alpha was released in september of 2016 and starts off with an intuitive introduction where you're facing your neighbor's house the door is open so your curiosity has already peaked you enter the house and nobody's home but you see a light coming from a door so of course you go over to it and you get caught now personally i love it when a game doesn't tell you where to go with waypoints and stuff like that it allows for a sense of investigation and you're essentially driven by curiosity however we'll see later where that becomes a lot more of an issue in this case the objective has already been made clear with the open door the light from the basement and an introduction to the main antagonist only to leave you outside intrigued and ready to break in although when you finally figure out how to get into the basement it's just a blank room void of any wizards not to mention the game was also buggy but then again this is just a pre-alpha and the overall concept was very interesting to explore only a month later on the 26th of october alpha 1 was available and to be honest it was very similar to the pre-alpha just with less bugs however i did still manage to get the neighbor stuck in my house and struggled with the physics but even then it was still fun this time the game starts off with a cutscene where your invisible self is driving down the road to your new house but then it cuts to your nefarious neighbor who already has their suspicions about you before even starting the game you already know something is up and once you get out of your car you'll notice a piece of paper with tasks to complete turn on the power move stuff in and sleep this is essentially a tutorial to help you learn the main mechanics and once you go to sleep you immediately wake up looking straight towards your neighbor's house so of course you go in now for some reason i didn't go through the door because i thought that that would be a bit too obvious instead i looked through the window and saw the neighbor just chilling on his couch watching pure static i break into the house and quickly hear the neighbor coming after me and well this is weird eventually though i get caught and then there's this cut scene where we see the neighbor going into his basement which somehow looks and sounds like a busy road i mean a [ __ ] tire just came out of there what the hell is in this basement comparing this intro to the pre-alpha where you have to first enter the house and you see a light coming from the basement this right here already feels like more of a downgrade in storytelling than anything else cutscenes are great and all but this seems a bit too obvious and doesn't really rely on guiding the player towards the main goal by natural means once you figure out that you need a crowbar to get rid of these nails and a lockpick to unlock the door you can finally see what's inside but then the neighbor closes the door on you catches you and buries you alive so all in all this is a great start we've got a promising concept with great mechanics that only really need a better polishing and a little bit of story on the side but i wouldn't be making this video if things didn't turn for the worse and this brings us on to alpha 2 the beginning of the decline alpha 2 came out a month after alpha 1 on the 22nd of november and it was different first of all we now have a player model which isn't much of an issue but the hand does seem to get in the way and it kind of sticks through these closets so overall it looks a little bit unfinished but then again this is an alpha for some reason now picking up items is a press and hold action which really sucks when you're trying to run away from this jackass movement somehow feels a bit more janky but now you can vault through windows in a sort of animated way that is when it actually works but hey this is still an alpha so who am i to be so critical at this point i didn't really notice why until i looked back at the footage but alpha 1 had a different feel to it and i think that's largely due to the intensity of the art style from slightly tim burton to a more zany cartoon aesthetic it kind of turned less into a horror game and more of a goofy playhouse but this is me just being petty at this point because things really start to take a turn for the worse about a month later with the next alpha release on the 22nd of december alpha 3 was released it's now constantly night time and the house is bigger that's cool right bigger house means more to explore well yes but please don't do it at the expense of the neighbor's ai the ground floor is where you need to be the most careful because the neighbor can actually catch you there however there's this gate at the top of the stairs which once you figure out how to get behind it it makes the whole game at least in this area completely neighborless although this issue does get resolved in the final release it still didn't really make too much sense now remember it only took them a month to get to this point since alpha 2. it felt like they just made the house bigger and kind of forgot about the neighbor which is a worrying sign to see especially in this phase of development and i'd like to think that this was the beginning of dynamic pixels neglect for the ai in favor for parkour the platforming in the previous alphas weren't any better but here it's like parkour suddenly became the main aspect of the game this was slightly more of a thing in alpha 2 but it's clear that this is the direction they're going in for this game it's not the worst idea platforming can be rewarding and can help to open up more options of entry when trying to break into this guy's house but the game is so buggy that trying to make this jump for example takes multiple annoying attempts you either bump off of something and accept your fate or slightly miss the jump because there's no way of changing direction in mid-air this is also where i started to notice an issue that will become more prevalent later down the line this game relies heavily on exploration to find key items in order to open the basement door or gain access to other areas you need to explore as much as you can this isn't necessarily a bad thing but after about 10 minutes running around trying to find items that i'm not even too sure if i need or not the neighbor became less of a formidable foe and more of an annoyance and when you mix this with parkour it only becomes a lot more frustrating the longer you play this was only the start to what we'll soon see as probably the most nonsensical frustratingly convoluted puzzle system you'll ever find in a game and overall even though this game seemed to be making progress quite quickly at that the quality of it would start to decline and i wouldn't even bring this up if this didn't become an issue later things don't get any better because next year on the 4th of may 2017 alpha 4 was released this in summary was just exhausting think alpha 3 but somehow worse the main selling point as i've said before was the neighbor's ai he had different traits like idle attack and offline while setting traps now it seems that ever since i triggered him for the first time he's constantly in hunt mode although this still wasn't really much of an issue because he's still just a ground floor enemy i mean i'm stuck here on this ladder just shooting pellets at him constantly because he can't do anything about it not to mention the house seems bigger there are more rooms to explore with the outside looking just as wacky as the inside this means more platforming more falling off of stuff more of these terrible physics the list goes on at some point it feels more like a box stacking simulator than anything else the puzzles didn't get any better either it felt like they were adding a lot of random stuff that didn't really need to be there or things that were way too cryptic to understand without having to read into all of the law it just paled in comparison to alpha one when it comes to the puzzles let me give you an example i made it into this room and found the crowbar that you need to take off the nails off of the wooden planks for the basement door but it's hot so you need to pick it up with a magnet and what you need to do is find a way to cool it down and if you've messed around with the taps and the bathtub you'll know that there is running water in this game so surely that must be a way for you to cool down the crowbar now i swear to god i put this crowbar in a bath and ran the water for ages so i thought well maybe i have to do something else maybe that there's another item that i need but i don't really know what it is after looking around in multiple different rooms trying to figure out what the hell to even do with this crowbar i gave up and i looked for a guide and it turns out that i need to find a water bucket and fill that water bucket up with the same water from either the shower or the taps that i was trying to use earlier to then sprinkle the water on the crowbar and cool it down i mean i understood what to do but clearly i was doing it the wrong way even worse i found this room with a giant magnet it's in this hidden room up here and the moment you enter anything that you're holding which is metal sticks to it including the [ __ ] crowbar so then i had to figure out a way to turn it off so i can get my crowbar back and also get this green key that stuck to it this puzzle drove me absolutely insane because i honestly didn't want to have to use another guide again i i wanted to figure things out for myself so i went downstairs to turn the power off thinking that that might work and no it doesn't was it powered by these generators that i found around the house well i turned all of those off and no yet again nothing so after about 30 minutes running around the whole house i did it again i looked it up and oh it turns out you have to make it onto the roof by stopping this train at a specific point then jump on this pipe then jump on the train to eventually get to the roof and throw something into this hole full of gears now how on earth was i supposed to figure that out by myself i'm sure there was another way but i just couldn't find it look puzzles are fun to complete the achievement is like no other but there has to be some sense to it the magnet for example could have had a wire that leads to the power source something subtle yet noticeable that genuinely could have been enough to figure out where at least to go instead of having to run about scratching your head pressing all these different buttons the challenge with the magnet was trying to figure out not only where the power source was but how to get there and the fact that i can just drop a box into these gears and it will completely screw the whole system doesn't really make much sense it also turns out a lot of people had the same opinion about these puzzles although not every puzzle had this issue the general impression was that the developers made these puzzles as convoluted and as confusing as possible in order to make the game deeper and give it a longer play time this may not be the official reason but it damn well seems like it there are also these mini games that i honestly tried to avoid one of which involved parkour and after nearly making it to the top i need to get stuck inside a box out of my own curiosity i decided to just finish the game and go into the basement the basement now looks very different and there's this platform that you need to jump to turns out after a couple of attempts i was missing something so with zero [ __ ] to give i looked it up online and oh yeah turns out i need to do that mini game to get a double jump ability i didn't know that there were abilities in this game at all this is the first time hearing about it and i guess the first time you figure it out is when you do one of these mini games so i completed the mini game and went back downstairs to the basement making it through there was slightly annoying because the neighbor is now down there with you but eventually i made it out i started off this video with high hopes thinking that the game can't be that bad that not much could have gone wrong because we're not even at the final release yet alpha one and maybe two were considered to be the best versions of the game period but this now brings us on to the full release and it's really not the best on the 8th of december 2017 the original hello neighbor was released on steam for around 30 before this there were beta versions of the game but to be honest it was very similar to what we've already seen the release was well received by a lot of fans but it was clear that this wasn't the most polished game the game is now split up into four acts the impression that i got from this is that act one is regarded as the best while the acts afterwards become progressively worse and i couldn't help but agree when playing it for myself act one has you starting out as a kid who looks about 30 kicking a ball down a street you run towards the ball and then a cutscene happens where you see something going on in your neighbor's house and it ends with him placing a red key on a blue table in a room upstairs the house in this act is relatively small similar to alpha one and two the neighbor follows his typical ai path and i'll be honest i had a pretty good time exploring the place i knew exactly where to go and there was just the right amount of platforming i didn't really notice any bugs and figuring out how to actually get into that room isn't all too difficult there are a couple of puzzles but once i figured out how to get this wrench which you need to open up the ladder in order to get onto the roof i made it through this hole landed in the room found the red key and managed to make it into the basement but from this point onwards things start to slip and this game becomes more of a chore when you get into the basement at first things look normal but you'll quickly find out that this washing machine is actually a door that leads into a room once you figure out how to break out of this room you'll find yourself in this dark maze the maze part wasn't all too bad the neighbors down here with you so it makes it a bit more difficult but it wasn't all too difficult to get through it was just more annoying than anything else once you finally make it out of this maze you're in this hallway a cutscene starts and you realize the neighbor is right behind you so now you're running away from the neighbor through this hallway only to get to the end and realize that the exit requires three keys to make it through the door then you get core and now it's act two this is where the game becomes more frustrating than anything else you wake up in the same room you found before and once you get out of the basement you quickly find out that you're trapped on this guy's property the house is bigger now and for some reason the neighbor seems to patrol his garden more often than the house which leads to me getting caught and having to see the same god damn animation over and over again i tried to figure out what to do for ages in this park and i had a feeling that these pipes all around the house had something to do with the objective with no surprise it turns out they're all a part of some convoluted way to open up the gate to this massive trampoline of which you need to jump over the fence with for some reason you need to turn on all these levers to increase the pressure in order to get this handle and it somehow just pops off because there's too much pressure even though that's not really how handles work then you need to figure out where to put this handle and do a whole bunch of other stuff and and there you go somehow that opens up the gate and you can get out of the house but instead i opted for parkour because at this point i'm getting pretty good at it so i legit use a speedrunner strat to jump over the fence whilst getting out of the house there's this cutscene with a a really awkward camera angle for a brief second where you see yourself whimper back into your house this now brings us on to act three and this is where the story goes from quirky to downright insane and you'll soon see why we're now much older and struggling from a crack habit leaving us out of pocket to pay the bills so you pack up leave and return back to your old house the neighbor's house is totally wrecked and after seeing shadow demons from your crack withdrawal you go back home and sleep on your crusty couch then you wake up only to see that the neighbor's house is back and even more wacky than before similar to alpha 4 i'm gonna have to do a lot of platforming try and figure out puzzles without having to bring up a guide for the 15th time and not only find a key for the basement but also keys to mini games which i need to do in order to gain special abilities in total there are three mini games to complete and each of these give you a special ability that are required to proceed to the final act there's one that we've seen before where you do parkour in a pantry this gives you the double jump ability another one where you have to go through some warped grocery store and collect the same items that these glitched out mannequins have honestly the only challenge here is to make sure you collect the right items and not glitch into the shopping cart not to mention it's really awkward trying to put even your pickles in the cart because for some reason the physics likes to bug out and you have to kind of aim in a certain position to try and get things in there properly also the special ability from this is some weird static whenever you crouch which honestly you only need to use once within the whole game and the last mini game has you running through a school trying to hide from mannequins yet again at the end of this mini-game you get the ability to push all in all the mini-games somehow felt less finnish than the rest of the game there are also these nightmare scenes that happen every now and then once you get caught by the neighbor they act as a way of telling the story but of course because this is hello neighbor they do it in a very cryptic and mysterious way where you essentially go through a walking simulator and i guess get glimpses at the neighbors past there's not too much to say about them i mean go on a roller coaster and knock this cardboard cut out of a girl into the abyss i mean that's the most amount of entertainment i got out of them anyway after completing the mini games and unfreezing the key card from the freezer i made my way down to the basement and this is honestly where it feels like they just gave up first off there's this shadow figure hanging about and to get past him you simply just crouch remember the static ability we picked up earlier this is the one time you need it in fact i'm pretty sure you can still hide from this guy without that ability all you've got to do is simply crouch move forward a bit and then he just walks away and then disappears at the end of the hallway then you need to make it through this lit up room and double jump over the fence it's so awkwardly positioned that it doesn't feel like that's what you're meant to do but that's pretty much what you're meant to do funny enough on my first try without the double jump ability i managed to get over the fence just by glitching out this chair but when i opened the door the neighbor got me because this is where you need to i [ __ ] you not push him back like you could never do that before as a full-grown adult also wait a minute did you just see that let me just freeze this frame right here and let's let's have a look at what we see we have one hand two hand and apparently a third hand when i say this game feels unfinished and unrefined these are the little things that i'm talking about after all of this you make it down a hallway and now you're in a house with a giant neighbor looking at you he smashes the house and what the actual hell is going on let's assess the situation we're currently in an endless white void with a giant neighbor who does nothing to defend himself and trust me i threw this box at his sack and still nothing i'm gonna sum up this whole area in one word platforming no spooky neighbor coming after you no real threats just the fear of falling and having to climb all the way back up again after setting off a firework in his face shooting balls at his kneecaps and firing a toy arrow at him i can now make it onto the house that is on his back apparently i couldn't really do this before even if i got right up to the top of the map and tried to just float down with my umbrella because there are invisible walls in the way after making it on his back and getting into the house if you thought that what we just went through was lackluster at best then get ready for this you now have to protect your younger self from a giant shadow demon and it's a get to this point before the npc does sort of thing where you just stand in front of yourself to protect him from this big shadow demon where each time you do this you grow bigger and slower until you grow so big that the house you're in explodes and boom you beat the shadow guy because you're big i guess hype does matter and once you make it out of the final door you wake up yeah all of act three and the finale was just a dream so all of that for nothing i guess i wasn't all that invested in the story but this just felt like a punch in the balls to me if anything it was a representation of the absolute hell i went through to make this video so smash like for my sanity i guess because i i'm i'm really losing it at this point when it comes to the story behind any game after you've completed said game you generally have a good understanding as to what the whole story was about and if you're interested you might look into it a little bit deeper however hello neighbor seems to flip this on its head where it does tell a story but in a very cryptic way leaving a bunch of clues and hidden messages all over the place in the hopes that somebody will come up with a theory video about it to better prove this point this whole game's marketing strategy was entirely centered around getting big youtubers to play this game although this game was being worked on before for naf it's clear that they wanted to achieve the same kind of fandom and mystery surrounding it and to be honest it worked there are a lot of people who do enjoy the law behind this and who at the time did like to make theories about it but when you've got a game company or should i say in this case the publisher tweeting at matpat begging to have a theory video made about it it becomes very clear that this was really one of the main focuses to this game with the direction of development clearly being focused around law and making the game seem way deeper than it is the focus on the gameplay and experience takes the back seat act 1 was pretty fun because it was just centered around you avoiding the neighbor whilst trying to figure out a couple of puzzles the puzzles were fairly easy to understand with the main challenge being avoiding the neighbor himself but as it got to act two things got bigger and the puzzles became a lot more convoluted as well as more complicated puzzles and these mini games that i personally don't even feel really add too much to the game because the skills that you get from these are only really used in the last act and sparingly at that to then have probably one of the most lazy endings i've ever seen in the game where none of the previous mechanics are needed in order to beat the final boss i guess it was meant to have some sort of profound message and that's really what they were trying to do with it but besides that it just seems lazy i don't want to shift all of the blame onto the developers i have a feeling that the publisher behind this also had a lot of influence on the decision making around where this game was gonna go it's very clear with this now being a franchise that they're trying to profit on this as much as possible which is totally fine by the way if it works go ahead but with all the bugs and glitches the dodgy parkour the overly complicated puzzles for the sake of being complicated the abilities that we just thrown in there for lore and i guess a bit of padding and a pretty fun ai that only just became annoying because of the previously mentioned factors all of this and probably more is what went wrong with hello neighbor thank you so much for watching this video took a lot longer than i thought it would if you haven't already done so consider subscribing if you want to see more videos from this series and i want to say a massive thanks to my patreons who have helped to support this channel so much it's been wicked and i'll see you guys in the next one where i stand in your fridge

Channel: WickedWiz

Views: 5,345,566

Keywords: hello neighbor, hello neighbor game, what went wrong with hello neighbor, hello neighbor is bad, hello neighbour is garbage, hello neighbor is broken, hello neighbor is dead, what went wrong, what happened to hello neighbor, hello neighbour, wicked wiz

Id: jkoGm1t-kOA

Length: 27min 50sec (1670 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 14 2022