You know, it's easy to trash Bioware until you play something like this. The writing in this game is atrocious. In 50 minutes not a single interesting character, event or concept, not even a decent mood-building.
The visuals and sound have to do the heavy lifting here, and they manage. Especially the illustrations in the interface and loading screens. But you can only do so much with visulas in a Lovecraftian game. This whole brand of horror is about telling, not showing. And of course the lead writer has no ideas how to create horror. No subtlety. Just throw violence at the players with some dark ambient music. With this cartoony art style this is even worse than it would've been otherwise.
I really liked the character creation and class system, but I have an issue with Lovecraftian games gamifying insanity. When it's just a stat, it loses the essence of it as a literary concept. Lovecraft's parents were both committed to a lunatic asylum. Insanity was one of the largest themes in his stories, and served as a tool for the unreliable narration and to convey horrors beyond human comprehension. Here it's just a number.
The combat is very standard turn-based affair. But it does get kinda ridiculous here due to the nature of the setting. For example, I walked into a building and was ambushed by a few unarmed lunatics. I am a sane and experienced detective with a revolver. Who do you think won in this situation? That's right, the lunatics. Makes sense.
Anyway, a game like this is as good as its writing, and I am genuinely baffled how writers like this have jobs in this business. It's almost like the video game industry doesn't want to hire real writers, but instead look for guys who can dish out random content to fill the game world with. I heard Ubisoft is starting to use AI for their games, and many people are outraged. I'm not. Because guess what? Nothing's gonna change. This writing is already as lifeless as if it was generated by AI. Kinda can't wait for all major developers to embrace AI, so that these hacks would lose their jobs.
The visuals and sound have to do the heavy lifting here, and they manage. Especially the illustrations in the interface and loading screens. But you can only do so much with visulas in a Lovecraftian game. This whole brand of horror is about telling, not showing. And of course the lead writer has no ideas how to create horror. No subtlety. Just throw violence at the players with some dark ambient music. With this cartoony art style this is even worse than it would've been otherwise.
I really liked the character creation and class system, but I have an issue with Lovecraftian games gamifying insanity. When it's just a stat, it loses the essence of it as a literary concept. Lovecraft's parents were both committed to a lunatic asylum. Insanity was one of the largest themes in his stories, and served as a tool for the unreliable narration and to convey horrors beyond human comprehension. Here it's just a number.
The combat is very standard turn-based affair. But it does get kinda ridiculous here due to the nature of the setting. For example, I walked into a building and was ambushed by a few unarmed lunatics. I am a sane and experienced detective with a revolver. Who do you think won in this situation? That's right, the lunatics. Makes sense.
Anyway, a game like this is as good as its writing, and I am genuinely baffled how writers like this have jobs in this business. It's almost like the video game industry doesn't want to hire real writers, but instead look for guys who can dish out random content to fill the game world with. I heard Ubisoft is starting to use AI for their games, and many people are outraged. I'm not. Because guess what? Nothing's gonna change. This writing is already as lifeless as if it was generated by AI. Kinda can't wait for all major developers to embrace AI, so that these hacks would lose their jobs.
Arte bellísimo, Roleo bien metido y de los mejores que he jugado de este estilo, combates algo pesadetes. Pero, su gran, pero es que está a medias, no acaba y tiene varios bugs. Quitando eso, habría sido uno de los mejores juegos de los mitos de Cthulhu que he jugado.