Reviews from

in the past


Not to be a bummer but I sort of resent this. My initial review, which I stand by, says that Norco did not leave me with questions about either its world or my own. Now, the developers release this, apparently a follow-up to a series of posts on Steam, that just answer and explain lore and answer some of the few ambiguous things left in the world.

Why? Why, for a game that seems to want you to linger on words like hauntology and ponder magical realist themes, would the creators also go out of their way to answer any remaining questions? Why is any of this necessary? Does this really enhance the experience, or does it rob us of what little mystery we had left?

There's only so many times I can say "the danger is in the neatness of identifications" before someone is going to slap me over the backside of the head. So, I'll take Beckett's rephrasing that I hope is easier to understand: "Literary criticism is not bookkeeping." Neither is writing.