The game got a lot of hate online, but I’ve generally found when a game is hated on, there’s usually something more. So I decided to actually play the game. I’m 5 hours in
Honestly I like it, for telltale like walking simulator, it sets up the story pretty well, it has some nice sci-fi beats. It’s good for what it is. It isn’t anything it promises not to be. I think it’s a good game, I’d recommend waiting until it goes on sale for $10 maybe. At that price point it’s about the cost of a movie and That’s where I put it in terms of value pricing.
Honestly I like it, for telltale like walking simulator, it sets up the story pretty well, it has some nice sci-fi beats. It’s good for what it is. It isn’t anything it promises not to be.
If it feels like a walking simulator, that’s not at all what the store page is selling it as. It’s claiming to be all about action.
It’s a telltale game. There are action sequences but it’s like deliver us the Moon, any visual novel. Or stray,
The overarching narrative is on rails, with interactive gameplay at points, you can play an arcade game, you can play a side scroller in one flashback, there’s a punch them up shooter that’s kind of okay on the controls, there’s a couple decisions where it seems like you have choice but everything branches out then comes back at various breakpoints.
Don’t get me wrong I like it, but it is a walking simulator
Then people are entitled to be upset, because the entire store page is advertising a combat heavy action game.
Sure, agreed. If people are disappointed that’s fine, everyone is entitled to their perspective and opinion, hell I’m not even recommending people by the game right now, I think it’s worth it at $5 or $10.
The whole point of this post is I do see value in the game as it exists, maybe not as what people want it to be
Wow, that is not how the trailer presents it at all. They make it look like a spiritual successor to Hi Fi Rush. Cell shaded music combat game.
I just ordered the physical edition on Amazon anyway, figure it will be a neat curiosity item… even though the “physical edition” doesn’t actually have a disc either.
There’s like four or five opportunities to do a guitar hero style music element. So it’s not strictly a lie, but it’s not major element either
JFK becoming a dictator for life makes no goddamn sense. So Oswald misses John but kills Jackie. Due to this Kennedy becomes an dictator…how and why?
Just spitballing, losing the first lady would give the president an enormous amount of political support, and a mandate. They would be in a position to prevent such a thing from happening again, it would be an emergency akin to the burning of the Reichstag. If JFK was sufficiently angry, and paranoid from that event, they might use that type of emergency to put emergency powers into place and become some sort of emergency dictator in the moment, but the emergency never ends…
It would require a massive change in personality for JFK, but we don’t know how they would have handled losing their wife. It makes for interesting parallel fiction writing,
So the man who fought his party in the South to help the civil rights movement. Did a 180 to become a dictator just because his wife died. I just can’t see it.
Maybe the assassination attempt was a full fledged conspiracy by the other party from top to bottom and he just goes apeshit.
But yeah, weird premise.
Thank you. I feel like people are hating on it for just being ‘woke’. But, the story and characters seem pretty good to me. I seriously love the comic book art style. It’s not perfect, but it doesn’t need to be.
I understand why people can be upset with new entries to existing properties that don’t fit into the existing property. Where things feel like their wrenched and forced.
Dustbourne is a totally new property, it all fits together, the fact that some people are a little bit weird is just part of the story. It’s very cyberpunk in the desert on a road trip.
Quite frankly, people hating on it is probably good for it, it brings more attention to extremely small and niche project. The absolute worst thing people involved in ideological wars could do is not talk about an entertainment property, silence is death in the entertainment landscape.
Final thoughts after finishing
culture war drama
ahh, i do see the developers are inviting some of the drama themselves.
What’s really funny about this, in the universe they paint, is incredibly welcoming to all people. The governments pretty much leave everybody alone. Do whatever you want (but not drug selling). So this comment from one of the NPCs in game just doesn’t make sense in its own context. The only group discriminated against are the mutants…
thoughts after finishing the game
They never really conclusively discuss what the message event was, they hint it was from the JFK research center but that’s speculative.
The proto language appears to have complete powers over reality
The main focus of most of the end game narrative is about using powers to bend perceptions of reality.
I think the overall theme was the way to fight propaganda is with propaganda. I think that’s not the best messaging. Not even talking about dealing with people in a Socratic method, or meeting them in the middle. There was some speaking of empathy at the end, but not towards those who disagree with you. Just empathy with your friends.
The big McGuffin they talk about, but don’t actually do anything with, is giving the main character enough power that they can brainwash everyone on the planet to agree with them. I really think that’s a bad message, it’s not a resolution of the core problem. I want to point out the irony again, because it’s really important, the literal solution to all of their problems that they’re trying to do through the whole game is literally a woke mind virus…
The two major warring factions we talk about, the Puritans, and the Republic aren’t really flushed out. We don’t see why they’re evil. Yes they tried to leverage anomalies, or even separate anomalies from the general population. But other than that we don’t see the day-to-day life being such a horrible evil. They could have spent more story time flushing out why it’s such a bad thing instead of assuming we would believe it’s a bad thing. Quite frankly the Republic seemed very nice through all their interactions with the people
I think it’s a reasonable story game, I still think it’s worth about 5 to $10. I enjoyed the time I spend on it. I gave me time to think. I do wish they would have explored the sci-fi elements more towards the end.
why did they make this game?
I think the developers knew they were targeting extremely niche part of the market, and having played the game I can see they were signaling very strongly to that niche part of the market. In theory the point of video game development, is to make money.
Who is this game made for? Most people aren’t like me, and are going to play a game just to see if the controversy is warranted. So it’s probably people like me who account for the 50 people currently playing online.
I personally don’t think there’s anything tremendously wrong with this game, but the developers aren’t dumb, they knew what they were getting into, so why put themselves in this position? Is this just art? Like functionally I think this is a great game for your resume. But they (15 people) spent 5 years on it. That’s a long time for an art project
There are 309 people in the credits.
main character romance
So the main character female is in a on-again off-again situationship with the albino gender ambiguous person. The main character has a fling just before the start of the graphic novel, and gets pregnant. The pregnancy is a big slow reveal throughout the whole novel, but the hint out it very hard from the start.
At the end of the story, the main character and the albino have a reveal your emotions moment in the diner, and the main character reveals she’s pregnant via the fling, and the albino just accepts it, no discussion.
That is a huge missed opportunity for drama, that would be a great narrative space to explore these different characters and how they navigate the complications of relationships. And expectations. And communications. But the fact that it just slides by with barely a comment, it’s a wasted opportunity. I’ve watched eight season telenovelas about this single issue. For it to be glossed over in one sentence is just absolute waste of a script and set up
The stakes they do have set up, depending on how much you’ve invested into the albino gift-giving throughout the story, the albino might stay with the main character forever and raise the kid, or the albino leaves and goes to Hong Kong as soon as the game ends. But it has nothing to do with the fling or the child, it’s all about gift-giving.
How did they pay for the game?
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1827912191275909237.html
More data on this twitter thread. I’m not happy using twitter as a source, but there is a puzzle here, how can this company keep releasing extremely niche games, how do they stay in business?
- 1.4M USD from Norwegian Film Institute
- 150k USD from EU Grant
But… the math doesn’t add up, 15 employees over 5 years at 100k USD per employee : 7.5M (probably more, since they had 309 people mentioned in the credits)… so where does the rest of the money come from?
The theory is that RedThreadGames exists to turn grants into games, and they don’t care if they make money from the games.
mall story beats
Just finished the mall scene, I love the fact that the teleconferencing failed and the back and forth with the proxy. That was that was good situational comedy.
Somebody’s been on a lot of zoom calls
I was screaming at the programmer, wanting to use a network computer to look at the super secret thing. This guy supposed to be a hacker and a programmer and he’s willing to do something so dumb. And then of course it blows up on them. And of course you have to do the dumb thing, there’s no way to avoid it. Kind of a forced beat, but that’s the nature of illustrated novels, I just wish they didn’t ask me to hit the button to make them do the thing I know is going to be really dumb
first chapter thoughts
The game has really good sci-fi bones, weren’t a dystopian future with warring factions, got to take a mcguffin from one faction to another faction. On this journey we explore what caused the current apocalypse and political situation. There’s some parallel history with JFK surviving the shot.
In the spirit of Skyrim, selected people are imbued with a voice, that lets them control other people a little bit. And we’re revealing how people acquired this voice, the event that happened, what the limits of these powers are. So it’s it’s like a bit of a superhero mystery box
Overall the world building is good in this context, it’s definitely a game focused on the emotional journey and if that’s not something that interests you then you’re not going to enjoy it. But it is an emotional journey and a compelling sci-fi future.
And if you just stick to the main plot and move through it you don’t get overburdened with emotional exploration
I did find it funny the old family compound was skating by not being noticed by anybody, until they became drug dealers. And then the heat came down on them. And everybody’s blaming the government for cracking down on the drug dealers… It seems like a odd perspective
The game is all about managing your relationships, that’s probably the most interactive part of the game.
The visuals are pretty good, but the lip syncing to voice gets out of sync quite a bit.
I really do like the cyberpunk sneaker net, they call it a weaver net, like you see in Cuba right now
Robot zombies lol
