I think everyone should play this game.
I don't know how to talk about it, though. How to say "I cried at least ten times not because the game was sad — though it sometimes was — but because it was so tender, so loving, so unique" without sounding like a pretentious asshole. I don't know how to talk about Kochi, a little boy who shares his memories of his father with you because there's no way to put that love to letters. I don't know how to talk about the line "It's the two hardest things to hold in your head. They were just boys, and they killed my family" without dissolving into tears.
It's easier to talk world-building and visuals and mechanics. This game has perhaps the most interesting world in any game I've played recently. The societies and values are so much like ours and yet not like ours at all. The mixture of modern aesthetics with old-world mysticism feels so wonderful and lovely. It's explicitly post-apocalyptic but also not. It's SO gorgeous to look at, and the style is so so unique and the models are so so gorgeous.
The walking is sometimes clumsy, and you can get stuck — the game knows this, and the pause screen has a helpful button for unsticking you. The bike - riding, assuming you don't end up wedged in a corner, feels good and tight and not tight at all, much the way actually riding a bike is, I spose. But the gameplay focuses less on moving through the world and more on recording it. There are a few things in the world that you must record to progress, but by and large what you record and why is purely up to you. My journal was filled with photos and sounds that were mine, meaningless nothings that don't matter, but maybe they do, because I saw them, because I recorded them, because I am a part of the world and in seeing and recording I make the world part of me. If you want fast, kinetic gameplay, this isn't it, but the game and the story wouldn't be served by gameplay like that. The gameplay is perfect for telling the story the story wants to tell.
And — it's funny, because gamer-brain initially made this very thing hard to enjoy. I wanted clearer marks of progression. I felt like I'd failed each time I took a photo that wasn't plot relevant or recorded a song that didn't change the worldstate. I was frustrated I wasn't moving fast. Games train us in all sorts of ways, and the leading games in the world now might create beautiful worlds, but they don't really want you to look at them. They want you to find the right tool, the right answer, the golden ending.
And if there's a right tool, there's a wrong one. If there's a golden ending, there's a bad one. If the world is beautiful but not meant to be seen, then the people in the world aren't real, they're enemies or allies or NPC fodder. And this game eschews all that. It's a game where the magic isn't in winning, it's just in seeing and being and loving. It was disconcerting and refreshing, how the game never "takes a side" — it observes the world, and the protagonist has the occasional curious thought about the extreme actions taken by others, but there's no judgement in the thoughts. There are no villains, just people, doing what they can to escape and survive. The game doesn't ask you to come down hard on one side of it's internal debates about rightness, wrongness, memories — it doesn't stop you, but the way the game lets you observe is so wonderful. I've seen other say the ending feels abrupt, but it's the only way for it to end, I think. Abrupt, like the end of the world, but still loving, still whole.
When I finished, my first thought was that I wanted to replay immediately. It's a short game, and I wanted to try the other dialogue options, learn more about this world and these societies that are so similar and so alien to mine. I wanted to see the other ending. But at the same time...this game isn't like that. It's not a game to devour fast as you can, to scour and scum through to achieve maximum content. It's a game that feels a little like climbing into a warm bath. It envelopes you without swallowing you and without you swallowing it. It's just...comfy, and buoyant, and sometimes you sit and you listen to the water and you feel like you're more in the world than you ever have been. I will replay it sometime, probably sometime soon, but...I want to sit with it longer first. I want to let my fingers prune and unprune. I want to let the Season end, and appreciate what it left me with.
I guess, if the game has a moral, a meaning, something you need to take from it, it's something simple: to love even in a world that is passing away, and to take comfort that this end of the world is neither the first or the last. Something new to love will come after, as it always does, and as it has again and again and again.
I don't know how to talk about it, though. How to say "I cried at least ten times not because the game was sad — though it sometimes was — but because it was so tender, so loving, so unique" without sounding like a pretentious asshole. I don't know how to talk about Kochi, a little boy who shares his memories of his father with you because there's no way to put that love to letters. I don't know how to talk about the line "It's the two hardest things to hold in your head. They were just boys, and they killed my family" without dissolving into tears.
It's easier to talk world-building and visuals and mechanics. This game has perhaps the most interesting world in any game I've played recently. The societies and values are so much like ours and yet not like ours at all. The mixture of modern aesthetics with old-world mysticism feels so wonderful and lovely. It's explicitly post-apocalyptic but also not. It's SO gorgeous to look at, and the style is so so unique and the models are so so gorgeous.
The walking is sometimes clumsy, and you can get stuck — the game knows this, and the pause screen has a helpful button for unsticking you. The bike - riding, assuming you don't end up wedged in a corner, feels good and tight and not tight at all, much the way actually riding a bike is, I spose. But the gameplay focuses less on moving through the world and more on recording it. There are a few things in the world that you must record to progress, but by and large what you record and why is purely up to you. My journal was filled with photos and sounds that were mine, meaningless nothings that don't matter, but maybe they do, because I saw them, because I recorded them, because I am a part of the world and in seeing and recording I make the world part of me. If you want fast, kinetic gameplay, this isn't it, but the game and the story wouldn't be served by gameplay like that. The gameplay is perfect for telling the story the story wants to tell.
And — it's funny, because gamer-brain initially made this very thing hard to enjoy. I wanted clearer marks of progression. I felt like I'd failed each time I took a photo that wasn't plot relevant or recorded a song that didn't change the worldstate. I was frustrated I wasn't moving fast. Games train us in all sorts of ways, and the leading games in the world now might create beautiful worlds, but they don't really want you to look at them. They want you to find the right tool, the right answer, the golden ending.
And if there's a right tool, there's a wrong one. If there's a golden ending, there's a bad one. If the world is beautiful but not meant to be seen, then the people in the world aren't real, they're enemies or allies or NPC fodder. And this game eschews all that. It's a game where the magic isn't in winning, it's just in seeing and being and loving. It was disconcerting and refreshing, how the game never "takes a side" — it observes the world, and the protagonist has the occasional curious thought about the extreme actions taken by others, but there's no judgement in the thoughts. There are no villains, just people, doing what they can to escape and survive. The game doesn't ask you to come down hard on one side of it's internal debates about rightness, wrongness, memories — it doesn't stop you, but the way the game lets you observe is so wonderful. I've seen other say the ending feels abrupt, but it's the only way for it to end, I think. Abrupt, like the end of the world, but still loving, still whole.
When I finished, my first thought was that I wanted to replay immediately. It's a short game, and I wanted to try the other dialogue options, learn more about this world and these societies that are so similar and so alien to mine. I wanted to see the other ending. But at the same time...this game isn't like that. It's not a game to devour fast as you can, to scour and scum through to achieve maximum content. It's a game that feels a little like climbing into a warm bath. It envelopes you without swallowing you and without you swallowing it. It's just...comfy, and buoyant, and sometimes you sit and you listen to the water and you feel like you're more in the world than you ever have been. I will replay it sometime, probably sometime soon, but...I want to sit with it longer first. I want to let my fingers prune and unprune. I want to let the Season end, and appreciate what it left me with.
I guess, if the game has a moral, a meaning, something you need to take from it, it's something simple: to love even in a world that is passing away, and to take comfort that this end of the world is neither the first or the last. Something new to love will come after, as it always does, and as it has again and again and again.