Hyper Light Drifter is a metaphor. It is also a supremely playable action adventure. It is not both equally - the expression of its theme comes first. Hyper Light Drifter is a rumination on how one chooses to dedicate their life towards causes that better the world while cognizant of their own looming mortality. Any evaluation of the game as an action adventure only makes sense within this context.
Hyper Light Drifter was lightyears ahead of its discourse. Pre-release interviews asked the developer about its combat systems. Comparisons were made to 2D Zelda games. Players complained about the lack of text or dialog. I myself bounced off this game when I tried playing it closer to release. Now that I’ve played a few art house indie games (and Bloodborne), I realize Hyper Light Drifter is the kind of game others (like GRIS) market themselves as and fail to be - that Hyper Light Drifter is about something, down to its very bones.
Everything in this game world is built around the insurmountable presence of death. Corpses of giants litter and create the landscape. Plants have retaken machines of war. People hunt each other for cruel and petty gains in a small and crumbling world, survivors and drifters nursing wounds and grudges. Hyper Light Drifter is deft enough to understand death is made real by the lamenting survivors and the anticipatory fear of the doomed. Context is everything, and context is the throughline of how the Drifter is crafted.
In a game without words or dialog, every movement of the player character becomes scrutinized in the search for their soul. He can dash, but he cannot run. He can slash wildly, but only thrice. Between delays in the Drifter’s combat animations and the way he reluctantly arises from a moment of quiet, his demeanor is solidified as deliberate, capable, and tired.
The Drifter routinely coughs up blood, politely dampening the sound even when alone. He winces to hold his breath before injecting a healing tonic. The Drifter will not draw his sword in front of civilians, but will play soccer with children. He’ll toss coins to the downtrodden. The only people who will talk to him, (or is it more accurate to say, who he chooses to talk to?), have experienced significant loss. By implication, these conversations lead to imaginings of how the Drifter is able to empathize with these people, and why he is on his journey.
All the while, Anubis quietly, radiantly beckons to the ruins of the underworld.
I can understand the impulse to say that Hyper Light Drifter does not have a story, but I would posit it is more accurate to say it does not have a plot. The Drifter is dying. He has a goal he must accomplish before this happens. Along the way, there are people who do not ask for help, but on whose behalf he takes vengeance. As players, we cannot choose any other path for the Drifter to take, but the gameplay reinforces the feeling of this world demanding hard choices.
Every facet of the game’s combat forces the player to make interesting choices. All upgrades require the same difficult-to-obtain trinkets. These trinkets are just obtainable enough to afford a single purchase at a time, and just rare enough to forever second-guess which purchase is right. The health bar has an unchanging five segments, and many common enemies can deal two marks per hit. Health items must be scavenged, the Drifter unable to hold enough to ever feel safe. After taking three damage, a conundrum arises. Do you risk taking one more hit to get the most out of your tonics? Or heal early to be safe, and possibly regret needing it later?
Boss fights are challenging. Their healthpools are massive, and the Drifter is frail. Victory requires perseverance and precision, using the Drifter’s limited tools in the face of much more elaborate and devastating abilities. Together, these elements create miniature dead-ends that emerge from player choices. Perhaps you arrived at a grueling combat encounter with minimal health and tonics - do you teleport yourself away to regroup and fight your way back, or rise to the occasion to avoid the risk of returning in worse condition?
Continually forced to make difficult choices with incomplete information and an uncertain future necessitates an adoption of a certain philosophy. These circumstances cannot last. You will find more trinkets; no purchase is worthless. You cannot win without conserving your first aid kits, as you cannot move forward continually assuming the worst. You cannot fear death, (or the permanence of your choices), forever if you want to accomplish your goals. You are forced to believe in your own improvement and ability. The Drifter will try again as often as you need him to.
Because the Drifter follows Anubis willingly.
I was profoundly touched by the ending. Lore-wise, I had no idea what was happening. But the emotions were earned and real. Of what it's like to fight your own body and lose. The gravitas every decision accrues when there won’t be time for another. The dignity that comes from living with a chronic illness, after pain has long since lost its novelty and yielded to the pure focus required for the smallest of tasks. The ending did what all good endings should do - punctuate the purpose of the whole experience in reverberating clarity.
The context of the ending crystalizes what kind of man the Drifter always was. Why a frail man fought monsters and murderers so much stronger than himself. It could never be for his own gain, for there is no cure for death. There is only the creation of meaning through a life lived deliberately, by creating a better world he will never see. All conveyed so subtly I can forgive anyone for missing it.
Hyper Light Drifter is one of the few games where I role-played my actions to routinely let the player character rest. There is no benefit to doing so. But his journey is hard.
Hyper Light Drifter was lightyears ahead of its discourse. Pre-release interviews asked the developer about its combat systems. Comparisons were made to 2D Zelda games. Players complained about the lack of text or dialog. I myself bounced off this game when I tried playing it closer to release. Now that I’ve played a few art house indie games (and Bloodborne), I realize Hyper Light Drifter is the kind of game others (like GRIS) market themselves as and fail to be - that Hyper Light Drifter is about something, down to its very bones.
Everything in this game world is built around the insurmountable presence of death. Corpses of giants litter and create the landscape. Plants have retaken machines of war. People hunt each other for cruel and petty gains in a small and crumbling world, survivors and drifters nursing wounds and grudges. Hyper Light Drifter is deft enough to understand death is made real by the lamenting survivors and the anticipatory fear of the doomed. Context is everything, and context is the throughline of how the Drifter is crafted.
In a game without words or dialog, every movement of the player character becomes scrutinized in the search for their soul. He can dash, but he cannot run. He can slash wildly, but only thrice. Between delays in the Drifter’s combat animations and the way he reluctantly arises from a moment of quiet, his demeanor is solidified as deliberate, capable, and tired.
The Drifter routinely coughs up blood, politely dampening the sound even when alone. He winces to hold his breath before injecting a healing tonic. The Drifter will not draw his sword in front of civilians, but will play soccer with children. He’ll toss coins to the downtrodden. The only people who will talk to him, (or is it more accurate to say, who he chooses to talk to?), have experienced significant loss. By implication, these conversations lead to imaginings of how the Drifter is able to empathize with these people, and why he is on his journey.
All the while, Anubis quietly, radiantly beckons to the ruins of the underworld.
I can understand the impulse to say that Hyper Light Drifter does not have a story, but I would posit it is more accurate to say it does not have a plot. The Drifter is dying. He has a goal he must accomplish before this happens. Along the way, there are people who do not ask for help, but on whose behalf he takes vengeance. As players, we cannot choose any other path for the Drifter to take, but the gameplay reinforces the feeling of this world demanding hard choices.
Every facet of the game’s combat forces the player to make interesting choices. All upgrades require the same difficult-to-obtain trinkets. These trinkets are just obtainable enough to afford a single purchase at a time, and just rare enough to forever second-guess which purchase is right. The health bar has an unchanging five segments, and many common enemies can deal two marks per hit. Health items must be scavenged, the Drifter unable to hold enough to ever feel safe. After taking three damage, a conundrum arises. Do you risk taking one more hit to get the most out of your tonics? Or heal early to be safe, and possibly regret needing it later?
Boss fights are challenging. Their healthpools are massive, and the Drifter is frail. Victory requires perseverance and precision, using the Drifter’s limited tools in the face of much more elaborate and devastating abilities. Together, these elements create miniature dead-ends that emerge from player choices. Perhaps you arrived at a grueling combat encounter with minimal health and tonics - do you teleport yourself away to regroup and fight your way back, or rise to the occasion to avoid the risk of returning in worse condition?
Continually forced to make difficult choices with incomplete information and an uncertain future necessitates an adoption of a certain philosophy. These circumstances cannot last. You will find more trinkets; no purchase is worthless. You cannot win without conserving your first aid kits, as you cannot move forward continually assuming the worst. You cannot fear death, (or the permanence of your choices), forever if you want to accomplish your goals. You are forced to believe in your own improvement and ability. The Drifter will try again as often as you need him to.
Because the Drifter follows Anubis willingly.
I was profoundly touched by the ending. Lore-wise, I had no idea what was happening. But the emotions were earned and real. Of what it's like to fight your own body and lose. The gravitas every decision accrues when there won’t be time for another. The dignity that comes from living with a chronic illness, after pain has long since lost its novelty and yielded to the pure focus required for the smallest of tasks. The ending did what all good endings should do - punctuate the purpose of the whole experience in reverberating clarity.
The context of the ending crystalizes what kind of man the Drifter always was. Why a frail man fought monsters and murderers so much stronger than himself. It could never be for his own gain, for there is no cure for death. There is only the creation of meaning through a life lived deliberately, by creating a better world he will never see. All conveyed so subtly I can forgive anyone for missing it.
Hyper Light Drifter is one of the few games where I role-played my actions to routinely let the player character rest. There is no benefit to doing so. But his journey is hard.