That Which Gave Chase: An Arctic Adventure Horror Game

a few weeks back it was -10° in my city when I left to walk to work that's -23 C to those of you who've never had waffle house as soon as the cold air hit my eyes tears started streaming down my face I took a sip of water before I left and the water droplets of my mustache immediately solidified into ice crystals after walking for a bit the inside my nose started to feel heavy and uncomfortable and I realized that my snot had Frozen inside my nostrils I thought about that if I wasn't bundled up

and actively moving it might not have taken long for me to freeze to death it got me thinking about when in the cold see I was just getting a taste of the cold as I walked from my warm and comfortable home to my warm though much less comfortable workplace I love winter it's a cozy nostalgic and beautiful season but for the vast majority of human history it was a time of fear hunger and death for our ancestors without Heating and cars and mass-produced winter clothes each winter must have felt li

ke a relief to survive through and each summer must have been tinged with Dread of the season to come but there parts of the world where Winter never ends just shifts between various shades of deadliness the first domesticated dogs were probably sled dogs thousands of years ago the inhabitants of Siberia developed a covenant with the Arctic wolves that would eventually become the Siberian Husky a stout thickly furred dog with the energy of a 50 lb hron collider the practice of dog mushing as the

superior form of travel and Arctic Landscapes spread into kind of belt across the top of the northern hemisphere from there it spread to the native people of Canada French Colonial voyagers helpful Prospectors on their way to the Yukon and finally the explorers and the Arctic Expeditions that eventually conquered the North and South poles dog mushing is a tradition as old as dogs themselves and I think in many ways it's symbolizes the human struggle to outwit nature in the elements with Ingenui

ty and interspecies teamwork what was the life of a dog musher like though a lonely life on the margins i' imagine living in places where humans were never meant to live a leader of animals rather than men living with his dogs training his dogs eating and sleeping alongside his dogs I imagine a musher would become part dog [Music] himself this is the world that the horror game that which gave Chase invites us to inhabit the game was released rather unseasonably in June of last year by Norwegian

developer OT Carlson hlid and by developer I don't mean like a game development company I mean one Scandinavian dude probably working out of his bedroom You Know the Way games were meant to be made and that which gave chase you play as a dog mushroom near the turn of the 20th century escorting a mysterious and more than a little ominous traveler who will call the Explorer deeper and deeper into an Arctic Wasteland let's get started our game begins in meteor us in a forested dusk the Explorer is

eager to push forward and your team of huskys seems game too give them all the little scratch under their chin that they deserve and get going you climb aboard the sled let up the anchor and get your first Taste of the majority of the game's gameplay the game is primarily a dog sleding game after all and though you'll also occasionally be on foot most of what you'll be seeing is your team of huskys leading you forward if the sled was like a car then essentially your foot is always on the gas all

you can do is steer slow down and lean left or right to course correct when the sled is about to Tumble over this happens a lot and your passenger is always kind of a dick about it which would be understandable if he wasn't also a dick about most other things anyways I'm getting way ahead of myself as you get your bearings steering the sled the Explorer cryptically alludes to you being somehow destined to work together and vaguely implies how important important his mission is after a title dro

p the game cuts to you speeding downhill in the sled through a much more Barren looking Arctic landscape even though it's early this was the point in the game where I really started to appreciate how much the low deaf cursed PS1 Graphics complemented the harsh Sinister setting when the graphics are so stripped down to minimalist it sinks in just how desolate and empty the hazy landscape of icy blue and gray is and anyways as you get the hang of the steering The fast-paced Descent becomes pretty

fun um sorry but I'd really prefer if you don't look at me like that soon enough you come to a cabin and lay down your an to explore here's a great chance to appreciate the gamees dogs even though they're so Lowes there is just this Indescribable authentic doggin to them I love how they look up at you with their pale blue eyes when you come close and that little content smile they give when you scratch them I also appreciate how each dog has its own color pattern and that when you stray too far

from them they start howling and a little tracker appears on the screen to tell you where they are anyways they're much better traveling companions in this weirdo but they're not the ones paying us as you approach the cabin though something interesting happens the game suddenly cuts to you being L up a glacier at Night by the Explorer it's incredibly jarring initially the Explorer tells you that what you're approaching is the true test before this odd circle of fire engulfs the entire screen and

you flash somewhere else now initially I thought the jump cut was just a skip ahead but here we are seemingly back where we started this is something that I think is unique and frankly genius about the game the use of jump Cuts between place and time we've all heard of nonlinear storytelling but it feels like the Creator is doing something different here feels like you're experiencing different chunks of time sequentially in a random order or perhaps all at once the fact that jump cuts are so o

ut of the blue and un choreographed gives it all this streamlike slightly hallucinogenic feeling I'm sure something in the game's code is triggered them but you're not sure exactly what it is it's not like you touch an item or open a door and the game has a jump cut they're so subtle that even on my second and third play through I couldn't always tell what was prompting them which only enhances the dreamlike feeling I do think you supposed to be confused but if you want a bit more clarity about

the sequence of the game you can load scenes in the games men menu which gives the title of the location for each scene which gives a much better idea of the actual order of events anyways when we jump back from the night scene of the glacier we have a gun in are taking aim at a reindeer don't try to shoot the Explorer though because it breaks the law of time and space once you kill the deer you find that he was chomping on some mushrooms which the Explorer quickly pockets and there's another ju

mp cut to some dark and creepy Woods you can gather mushrooms here and if you throw them on the ground it attracts reindeer that will come out of the woods and get no scoped by you it's kind of creepy as you plot forward in the misty Woods occasionally shooting reindeer and hearing their Bellows around you it reminds me a bit too much of this bad fever dream I had when I was a kid when I was laid up with a fever in the dream I was either playing or actually in a video game that had the same grap

hic resolution as this where I was walking through these dark drewery woods with a hunting rifle occasionally enemies would come by and shoot them but nothing would come out of it so I just keep walking it was incredibly creepy and monotonous and even though the memory was in the back of my subconscious this segment captured the feeling perfectly in a way that kind of broke my brain to the point that I had just sto playing for the night anyways at the end of the section we find the Explorer stan

ding over a dear corpse beneath his oddly crucifix like signpost and then we get another jump cut seemingly backwards in time where the Explorer is explaining that the signpost that dot the Arctic land were built to guide the way during an earlier Expedition he went on he says we can't trust our senses here not even our memory now thus far I've just been talking through the game scene by scene which I'm going to stop at this point because like the game is an hour and a half long and experiencing

the story unfold is much more interesting than me just talking you through it so the rest of the video will just be large narrative Strokes in my attempt at defogging the story of the game the story is both very simple and austere in the amount of information you get but incredibly deep in terms of what it's asking you to imagine if you want to skip spoilers go ahead to the time stamp on the screen but hey make sure you come back when you're done playing the game pretty please anyways we contin

ue trying our best to navigate the fields of ice while the Explorer provides some increasingly Sinister insight into the past Expedition everything he says seems to personify the land itself as something that is withholding its secrets and trying to mess with senses and brains and time itself is certainly Playing Tricks on us he also keeps drinking some mysterious gamer Gunk from this flask he's carrying all in all he seems very untrustworthy and it always seems like he's testing us or preparing

us for something this place is the Civ he tells us pass through and you shall find all your imagined woes have been left behind but know this the ghosts that give Chase through the gray will never leave your side he clearly considers the place transformative but how exactly will it transform us we also have a nice wholesome bonfire chat with him at some unrecognizable point in our journey where he looks very normal and uh not creepy at all look at this dude he tells us that on the first expedit

ion after becoming hopelessly lost he noticed that despite the harsh baren landscape the reindeer were thriving doesn't take an expert to guess this is something to do with the fungus they've been eating this is touched upon again not long after where the Explorer shares of the expedition was stymied by the deer's health and constant sense of direction no matter what happened they always followed the herd and were intent on reaching a certain destination so they basically abducted one and separa

ted it from the herd but it still knew where to go so they mutilated it depriving it of its senses by cutting off its ears and eyes yet it still followed the same invisible route I love this scene because while he's describing this horribly cruel experiment more and more deer appear out of the fog and S our sled while Galloping as if they're about to take revenge because something tells me that deer mutilation was our creepy friends idea honestly what I kept thinking about is how interesting the

setting was not just as a horror game setting but as a setting for a video game in general in this setting there's such a strong feeling of freedom in exploring the unknown a game where you explore the setting with your team of dog sleds and interact with wildlife honest to be kind of cozy a sort of Jack London simulator however whatever Fun and Freedom we might feel from the game is checked by one thing the weirdo we're traveling with the developer really cleverly subverts the setting from one

of Adventure and exploration to increasing unease as we become more and more unsettled with her traveling partner you can relate if you ever tried to start up a conversation with a stranger either in a classroom or on an airplane or somewhere else where you're stuck in close proximity only to increasingly learn that you've initiated a connection with a creep and you were better off keeping your mouth shut and just playing Subway Surfers on your phone or something later we get a jump cut to a tw

ilight in the woods the Explorer isn't here so I think we can tell it's much later in the timeline than most of what we've experienced because he's not there to stop us we're able to explore the cabin nobody's inside but we find several notes left behind by the occupant it's real that the cabin dweller also part of the earlier Expedition got completely lost when he tried to leave when the place chooses to give directions we have no choice but to follow a diary entry places the earlier Expedition

at March 1892 the diarist explains that writing helps him separate his own thoughts and memory from theirs weird the diary also mentions some charismatic and respected leader that spurred up others to join him on this journey to their own Doom I think we can guess who that leader was when he turned to leave there's a uh very unsettling note on the door that wasn't there [Music] before in another conversation the Explorer speaks of the earlier Expedition as a cause of imbalance in the land like

they were foreign bacteria on an unsuspecting host we're treated to another scene of us without the dogs or sled scaling the glacier with the Explorer stating that all paths have been revealed to him before another f Circle consumes the screen when it clears we're back at the bonfire for another cozy fireside chat a lot is revealed here the Explorer tells us that he's been playing the part of the opposer he talks about ingesting poison to replace old flesh with new and that he like us is simply

a victim of circumstance feels like something in LSD adult Boomer would Mumble to you at a sweat lodge but more and more is becoming clear I'll just play the next part in [Music] full so we've been betrayed by the person we were hired to protect what does he mean though that he brought us here and now we will bring him out we awake tied to a chair in the bonfire cave now thanks to the graphics I'm not exactly sure what's happening here but it seems like we pull out mushrooms that are growing in

our arms maybe anyways eating the mushrooms will restore our seriously depleted Health Plus give us some odd space disordering visuals we see the fiery Circle again and scenes we've experienced previously Flash before our eyes the cave seems to be set up as lodgings for the Explorer that he's been living in this whole time now we see what he was luring us towards all along he said himself that it's all been leading to this we find a letter that gives us more insight into his motive it details hi

m finding us and enlisting us to travel with him the only hint to who he's writing the letter to is this you who recalls everything remember this also I brought him here I am the one who should be allowed to leave so all along we were sacrificed a scapegoat by offering us to the place he won his own freedom to finally Escape whatever spell or curse the place had cast his plan worked well but we've been through a lot so far we're not going out without a fight with our Vitality restored thanks to

the mushrooms we leave to find our dogs the mushrooms clearly have healing properties replacing old flesh with new as the Explorer said but they also seem to give us some insight into the collective memory of the place and the ghosts of the past perhaps this is why it grants life it allows those that consume it to live in every moment at once and as long as they never leave the place I know people who've ingested a bit more psychedelics than they should have who describe similar feelings where t

hey're inhabiting multiple timelines in a random order sequentially or all at once we track down the Explorer by following the trail from the dog sled while also using our mushroom powers to see ghostlike traces of the Explorer on our sled this part is honestly really cool the reality and time breaking powers of the mushroom are an interesting idea but must have been really daunting to put into a video game and I feel like they accomplished this very well eventually we find our sled abandoned th

e woods and can follow the howls of our dog to find and retrieve each one just make sure you give them a quick scratch to show how happy you are to see them again we also find a cabin that house is probably the most horrific scene we've seen all game inside are two shirtless corpses one in a chair with his wrist WR cut and the other in bed with his stomach burnt to ashes the way these were designed is so unsettling like despite the low graphical quality the Explorer has a surprisingly discernabl

e and distinctive face these guys though have these creepy smudge doll faces we can grab a rifle from one of the corpses and peruse the notes left behind one note sums up the powers of the mushrooms quite well everything is kept safe from the noise of time it's not so much immortality the mushrooms give us as a sort of embalming final note gives us a lot more context the inhabitants of the cabin were trapped reliving the past through its eyes once again that pronoun has plenty of mystery menace

to it the notes tells us that he and you can guess who he is wants to bring it out to let it do there what it is done here so I guess that's the Explorer's reasoning for bringing us here but wait I thought he wanted us to take his place if we eat a mushroom while we're here we see that he's responsible for the grizzly fates of the corpses in the [Music] cabin as we hunt for the last two dogs we hear someone taking aim and firing at us with a rifle once we finally assemble all the dogs though we

can jump on our sled and get the hell out of Dodge thank God even after sniping us off our sled the powers of the mushroom Keep Us Alive we have a final showdown in a very trippy but not all too hard boss fight which I didn't expect in a game like this but totally loved [Music] it's pretty satisfying when we get the final shot on son of a show them what you really think about him and grab the flask of mountain do kickart he's always sipping on anyway shooting guys in the snow is thirsty work so

let's grab a sip at last we get to leave this awful place we have the corpse the Explorer on our sled which I'm not sure why we thought is a good idea but whatever we get several jump cuts of our departure including these scenes where this odd God rays are staring down at us I don't know maybe this is nothing but it really seems like these aren't just innocent sud memes and that something's either watching us leave or following us the final shot of the game is a bit puzzling showing us mushing t

hrough the blue dusk followed by another perspective from the lower corner of our sled huh so what the happened as I said the story of the game is fairly Bare Bones and in terms of what actually happens but as deep as the ocean when we try to figure out what was actually going on here's my stab at unpacking it after playing it a few times buckle up as we know before the game begins a scientific Expedition took place to the Arctic place we'll call it the place as the game does led by a very chari

smatic leader with a singular vision of what he was pursuing the Expedition eventually becomes helplessly lost and falls apart but first the Explorer finds the center of the place and some deity or Spirit or entity that lives at its heart this entity does omnition in the place and seems to be part of the land itself the mushrooms allow us to tap to its Consciousness and timelessness but once you do you can't escape essentially you become Amalgamated into the entity itself like a horny male angle

r fish getting absorbed by its mate those that eat the mushrooms lose individual personhood and their memories are relinquished to The Entity some of the Expedition members Flinch are often settled in the cabins where their cursed with immortality and constantly spiraling memories where they are shown everything The Entity has ever observed and experienced the Explorer sets up a cave in the center of the place where the entity dwells he seems to become its servant or perhaps even its worshipper

perhaps on his own initiative perhaps on the entity's bidding he wants to draw out of the Arctic Wasteland onto the rest of the world however he also seems to be trying to regain his personhood somehow and escape from the clutches of the entity so that's a bit confusing eventually Ms us on the board of the place remember he can't leave we're living a lonely and purposeless existence as a musher living outside of society anyways he draws us to the center of the place to use us as a sacrifice but

as we saw we escaped by using the powers of the mushroom to kill him now I think his motives in seeming betrayal were a bit more complicated than just making us escape goat so he can escape remember his Consciousness belongs to the enity now I don't think he can keep any secrets from it I think he orchest ated every event to make it look like he was leaving us for dead including leaving ominous notes behind this inspired us to consume the mushrooms and the substance in his flask thus becoming pa

rt of the entity's Consciousness as well I think he intended us to kill him all along after all he was just playing the role as the opposer besides we don't really kill him in the true sense of the word as his Consciousness is already absorbed into the entities I thought a lot about the game's final shot at first I thought it might be his corps's perspective showing his body was still alive but I don't think that makes sense given its placement in the corner of the sled I think the most likely E

xpedition is that what we're seeing is the entity's perspective that has attached itself to our sled perhaps in the form of a mushroom that slipped through either way it seems that we are the ones leading the entity out of its Arctic prison and into civilization the Explorer got his wish and I'm thinking of the title of the game that which gave Chase first glance nothing is chasing us which makes the title kind of odd rather that which gave Chase is the thing on the periphery the thing we never

truly see the thing that every one of the Explorers monologues is actually about that which gave Chase is the entity itself the omnicient all-encompassing being that plays with our senses gets us lost shows us visions and guides us little by little into its Burning Heart or maybe we did see it that Circle of flame the glow of the Explorer's bonfire the fire that survives within the freezing wind and ice is perhaps The Eye Of The Entity itself watching us everywhere we go and making sure we know

it it's a confusing mysterious story and I honestly loved it I can't think of many video games where I had to sit down and pour over my notes just to figure out what was going on what I love about it is that it's this incredible Slow Burn Cosmic Horror Story of some ancient unknowable god that is always just behind the margins but the story we actually experiened is a very uncomfortable but commonplace one of a conflict between employer and employee a basic Story of Survival and betrayal that hi

des something much more terrible behind it it reminds me a lot of that movie The Lighthouse in that way I might not have gotten everything right but I love trying to piece together everything and the incredible aesthetic and atmosphere of the game made returning to it multiple times to get the information I needed that much more satisfying it's not a perfect game of course as one steam reviewer points out it almost feels like the game should have been either a good bit shorter or a good bit long

er there were some features like these hidden sign poost you come across that didn't pan out to be all that important but I'm honestly nitpicking as a standalone horror Adventure dog sleding Simulator game that which gave Chase stayed with me much longer than it hourish long run time and I can't wait to see what the developer has in store next well that's all for today thank you so much for your time dear viewer I wish you all the good fortune in the world I remain your faithful snuggler rip Squ

ad you back before you had a chance to for get forgotten I am moving ping notice I