Too much ambition and budget result in an amateur hour movie. I always wanted to experience a David Cage game for myself instead of parroting online opinions. I planned to play Heavy Rain in the future, but after this experience it'll be a very low priority. Why's that?
At first, I was actually pleasantly surprised. The technical details are working pretty well - all the animations are good, the facial expressions are a bit above the uncanny valley, and the QTEs are done fairly organically, usually best in the slow-mo sequences where you don't get a real prompt most of the time. All of this made it better than Vertigo, despite the only occasionally awkward controls.
The problem: It just gets bloated beyond (ha!) recognition, which really becomes apparent halfway through. Why are there so many mundane tasks? Why is there a fake parents plot? Why are there four separate instances of Ryan asking me out? Why does Aiden vanish for some time towards the end for no reason and then come back? I always appreciate not having to deal with writers killing everything but why have the gap at all? Why is there a horrible final choice once again? Why is 'love' for some reason the most important lesson learned for Jodie? What the hell are these random-ass partner options for spending my future life with?
In addition to the already long main narrative, three giant interludes teach you little about the world and yourself. The Navajo part is probably the nicest because of the change of scenery, but it merely tells you that portals to the infraworld exist. The homeless part teaches you in a grotesque birthing scene that Jodie can rely on herself, independent from Aiden. The military operation... doesn't teach you anything apart from that the CIA might be bad! (wow!) And that your actions have consequences! Other parts are just not set up properly, such as the suicidal moments supposedly caused by Jodie thinking that she's cursed. She kinda is, but not by Aiden - by the powers that are trying to use her, and the resolution is unclear. Similar story with Cole, who is a happy tag-along who has no agency besides caring about Jodie.
I wonder if a lot of the bloat is caused by the vocal demand for 'content', a nebulous term that's often used in low-quality reviews, most often in respect to 'playtime' - an easy quantifier that you can weigh against the cost of the game, where more content = longer playtime = better game. I strongly dislike how these terms are used in the area of narrative games, especially in conjunction with 'replayability' - an artifact left from the games without a narrative focus. The game does not only appeal to gamers in this way, but also by trying to be too direct, not at all trying to go on a more abstract or poetic layer, everything is spelled out exactly for you; both gameplay- and narrative-wise.
The entire non-linear storytelling shtick quickly evaporates because it's more dizzying than interesting. There are way too many segments and jumps. The intention was probably that watching Jodie grow up and go through the experiments etc would be boring - but the solution to that is not this random assembly of plot sections, it is to fix the original linear story. You can use such a technique rarely, like for the in medias res beginning. Or if you have skill. The only other narrative use for it is hiding the reason for the manhunt that you flee from in the beginning which is alright, but then the actual reveal happens in the aforementioned overly long military pseudo-stealth sequence in a horrific way.
And what's the message? Just run away? I'm not suggesting that Jodie is supposed to personally fight against all the world's militaries that are trying to use the infraworld for themselves, but simply leaving after you already did their dirty jobs twice isn't quite satisfying either. Nathan's fate, a sudden villain to be pitied, doesn't get set up properly either and gets resolved way too quickly. A shame, because the final set piece of approaching the Black Sun is quite nice.
Overall, it's actually not the most terrible thing - but the whole ambition and budget should really have produced something better. And probably smaller. Just play Transistor instead.
At first, I was actually pleasantly surprised. The technical details are working pretty well - all the animations are good, the facial expressions are a bit above the uncanny valley, and the QTEs are done fairly organically, usually best in the slow-mo sequences where you don't get a real prompt most of the time. All of this made it better than Vertigo, despite the only occasionally awkward controls.
The problem: It just gets bloated beyond (ha!) recognition, which really becomes apparent halfway through. Why are there so many mundane tasks? Why is there a fake parents plot? Why are there four separate instances of Ryan asking me out? Why does Aiden vanish for some time towards the end for no reason and then come back? I always appreciate not having to deal with writers killing everything but why have the gap at all? Why is there a horrible final choice once again? Why is 'love' for some reason the most important lesson learned for Jodie? What the hell are these random-ass partner options for spending my future life with?
In addition to the already long main narrative, three giant interludes teach you little about the world and yourself. The Navajo part is probably the nicest because of the change of scenery, but it merely tells you that portals to the infraworld exist. The homeless part teaches you in a grotesque birthing scene that Jodie can rely on herself, independent from Aiden. The military operation... doesn't teach you anything apart from that the CIA might be bad! (wow!) And that your actions have consequences! Other parts are just not set up properly, such as the suicidal moments supposedly caused by Jodie thinking that she's cursed. She kinda is, but not by Aiden - by the powers that are trying to use her, and the resolution is unclear. Similar story with Cole, who is a happy tag-along who has no agency besides caring about Jodie.
I wonder if a lot of the bloat is caused by the vocal demand for 'content', a nebulous term that's often used in low-quality reviews, most often in respect to 'playtime' - an easy quantifier that you can weigh against the cost of the game, where more content = longer playtime = better game. I strongly dislike how these terms are used in the area of narrative games, especially in conjunction with 'replayability' - an artifact left from the games without a narrative focus. The game does not only appeal to gamers in this way, but also by trying to be too direct, not at all trying to go on a more abstract or poetic layer, everything is spelled out exactly for you; both gameplay- and narrative-wise.
The entire non-linear storytelling shtick quickly evaporates because it's more dizzying than interesting. There are way too many segments and jumps. The intention was probably that watching Jodie grow up and go through the experiments etc would be boring - but the solution to that is not this random assembly of plot sections, it is to fix the original linear story. You can use such a technique rarely, like for the in medias res beginning. Or if you have skill. The only other narrative use for it is hiding the reason for the manhunt that you flee from in the beginning which is alright, but then the actual reveal happens in the aforementioned overly long military pseudo-stealth sequence in a horrific way.
And what's the message? Just run away? I'm not suggesting that Jodie is supposed to personally fight against all the world's militaries that are trying to use the infraworld for themselves, but simply leaving after you already did their dirty jobs twice isn't quite satisfying either. Nathan's fate, a sudden villain to be pitied, doesn't get set up properly either and gets resolved way too quickly. A shame, because the final set piece of approaching the Black Sun is quite nice.
Overall, it's actually not the most terrible thing - but the whole ambition and budget should really have produced something better. And probably smaller. Just play Transistor instead.