This review contains spoilers
An interesting high concept of course, but it feels hard to be content with much of the results. The style of the game most reminds me of last year's Paradise Killer except while the core area is nice to look at there's no further aesthetic elements to appreciate after your first run through of the city. Gameplay almost always boils down to running to one part of the city to talk to someone to unlock another conversation with someone else in a different part of the city. I find this cathartic and enjoyable to an extent but it's checklist-like charm wears off after a couple of hours. Perhaps this is why they introduced combat though I really wish they didn't. This says nothing for the bugs and extended loading screens that all feel like a vestigial structure of the game's Skyrim roots, but in some of the most disruptive and unenjoyable ways especially towards the end of the game when you simply want to travel quickly from A to B to finish the game.
As for the meat and potatoes of the narrative, the meandering exploration works really well for a while. The concepts of critiquing moral relativism and the ideas that cultures build morals and lore upon themselves are really well explored and explained through multiple smaller conflicts that occur throughout the city. This makes exploration and questing feel like it's truly adding something to your experience with the text... until the main narrative really kicks in. Once most of the core conflicts are resolved and you've learned all you can about the Romans, the Greeks, the Christians, the Egyptians and how all their cultures intersect and build upon one another, all you've got left is abjectly evil characters and Ancient Aliens shenanigans. The game fails to cement any of it's ideas by actively cheapening the idea of using religion as a method of cultural transmission with the statement that Evil Aliens have been behind the conflict the whole time. Beyond that multiple characters commit heinous actions such as unjustified imprisonment and swindling people out of their money leading to them going into indentured servitude. I managed to defeat Pluto by threatening to kill his wife for Christ's sake!
I never got the impression that the team of 3 behind this has any faith in humanity or the good in them. It seems that the only things humans are capable of is avoiding sin, not doing good. This makes reflecting on the game hard to stomach, no real antithesis to these ideas ever comes up even though the narrative hinges on having likable/good characters. On of the most villainous characters becomes tortured for eternity in the true ending and the best counter to that the game gives is a good ol' "agree to disagree".
At the end of the day there are ideas here that will stick with me for a while and transform how I think about how culture changes and adapts. There's a good flavor here that revels in growing knowledge through gameplay that I love. However, between the overwhelming pessimism and the massive amounts of technical issues, there permeates a stench around this game I feel is hard to shake.
As for the meat and potatoes of the narrative, the meandering exploration works really well for a while. The concepts of critiquing moral relativism and the ideas that cultures build morals and lore upon themselves are really well explored and explained through multiple smaller conflicts that occur throughout the city. This makes exploration and questing feel like it's truly adding something to your experience with the text... until the main narrative really kicks in. Once most of the core conflicts are resolved and you've learned all you can about the Romans, the Greeks, the Christians, the Egyptians and how all their cultures intersect and build upon one another, all you've got left is abjectly evil characters and Ancient Aliens shenanigans. The game fails to cement any of it's ideas by actively cheapening the idea of using religion as a method of cultural transmission with the statement that Evil Aliens have been behind the conflict the whole time. Beyond that multiple characters commit heinous actions such as unjustified imprisonment and swindling people out of their money leading to them going into indentured servitude. I managed to defeat Pluto by threatening to kill his wife for Christ's sake!
I never got the impression that the team of 3 behind this has any faith in humanity or the good in them. It seems that the only things humans are capable of is avoiding sin, not doing good. This makes reflecting on the game hard to stomach, no real antithesis to these ideas ever comes up even though the narrative hinges on having likable/good characters. On of the most villainous characters becomes tortured for eternity in the true ending and the best counter to that the game gives is a good ol' "agree to disagree".
At the end of the day there are ideas here that will stick with me for a while and transform how I think about how culture changes and adapts. There's a good flavor here that revels in growing knowledge through gameplay that I love. However, between the overwhelming pessimism and the massive amounts of technical issues, there permeates a stench around this game I feel is hard to shake.
2 Comments
It's treated as an obvious truth at the end. For most of the game there's a moral grey area where things that would be considered amoral in a modern society (which multiple of the "good characters" disagree with openly admittedly) but does not violate the rule of not sinning. In fact that's most of the conflict in the story, however when the true ending antagonist is introduced it becomes a point that there were only a couple of benevolent characters and that morally good actions did not result in positive change in the setting. In fact there is one mandatory event that has a character being saved with virtuosic intentions only for the character who was saved to unintentionally sin resulting in the deaths of everyone.
After reflecting on it for a whole you could argue the former thesis, in particular due to the fact that every character is operating within a broken system where every sin is decided through some juvenile idea of ethics. You could definitely say the point is that a broken society can lead to sin/evil or what have you, but the attempt at a happy ending felt contradictory to that idea. The idea that the amoral characters get their come uppins feels like a shallow attempt to reverse the innate hopelessness in humanity that exists within. Plus the whole Ancient Aliens plot line dismisses the idea of humanity having any ability to distinguish right/wrong to begin with. Either that or it's a classic anime style "we killed God so there's no way we're facists!"
Also you can murder and rob anyone without consequence and that was never accounted for
After reflecting on it for a whole you could argue the former thesis, in particular due to the fact that every character is operating within a broken system where every sin is decided through some juvenile idea of ethics. You could definitely say the point is that a broken society can lead to sin/evil or what have you, but the attempt at a happy ending felt contradictory to that idea. The idea that the amoral characters get their come uppins feels like a shallow attempt to reverse the innate hopelessness in humanity that exists within. Plus the whole Ancient Aliens plot line dismisses the idea of humanity having any ability to distinguish right/wrong to begin with. Either that or it's a classic anime style "we killed God so there's no way we're facists!"
Also you can murder and rob anyone without consequence and that was never accounted for
SimonDedalus
2 years ago