i often wonder where the AA/AAA games about motherhood are. and while technically this is a game about siblings, the way both Amicia's brother, Hugo, and also occasionally young budding alchemist, Lucas, huddle around her during certain sections where she has to illuminate a path through a plague of rats with a torch felt really maternal to me. it's also really rare for a game with a female protagonist to be so devoid of paternal/male figures too. i think that's what makes playing feel so fresh to me (even if it's not the freshest concept outside of games).
i really fell for this game's emotional tricks. the way it throws you into a bleak, terrifying world and then - like a flower blooming in the mud, blood and shit of a corpse-ridden battlefield - gives way to these really relieving moments of young teen characters bonding as they clutch onto each other (figuratively and literally) through the hell of it all. i think the game really nails those little quiet moments between stealthing passed inquisition guards and piles of swarming carnivorous rats, there's often a real personality to them (sometimes they offer levity, sometimes, as wit Melie, you can feel a genuine tension that exists beyond merely being your new BFF).
odd note: but i appreciate that i didn't have to collect any journals (i don't know why that stood out to me). but the "environment storytelling" is mostly the actual environment, a few npcs maybe, but there's like no like walls of text or little notes left lying around. made the game feel more in the moment, more urgent and the world by extension less artificially constructed (even if by the end what it's doing with the waves of rats is some insane out of this world shit... game kind of goes too far there i think but oh well).
also appreciate that murder in this game - while painted as a necessary evil via lines like "there was no other way" - isn't completely written off as just another wanton act of regular video game violence. the first two men you kill feels genuinely harrowing. likewise there are moments where you have a "choice" to kill/let someone die and while there's no morality system characters may remark upon it and in those moments you can feel Amicia grappling with her actions. it made me wish the game put more thought into non-violent combat and scaled back the amount of encounters where you 100% have to brain a guard with a rock/sic rats on them (and by the end the game feels like it just said fuck it, kill everyone). a missed opportunity but possibly because of how considered it felt at other times.
i really fell for this game's emotional tricks. the way it throws you into a bleak, terrifying world and then - like a flower blooming in the mud, blood and shit of a corpse-ridden battlefield - gives way to these really relieving moments of young teen characters bonding as they clutch onto each other (figuratively and literally) through the hell of it all. i think the game really nails those little quiet moments between stealthing passed inquisition guards and piles of swarming carnivorous rats, there's often a real personality to them (sometimes they offer levity, sometimes, as wit Melie, you can feel a genuine tension that exists beyond merely being your new BFF).
odd note: but i appreciate that i didn't have to collect any journals (i don't know why that stood out to me). but the "environment storytelling" is mostly the actual environment, a few npcs maybe, but there's like no like walls of text or little notes left lying around. made the game feel more in the moment, more urgent and the world by extension less artificially constructed (even if by the end what it's doing with the waves of rats is some insane out of this world shit... game kind of goes too far there i think but oh well).
also appreciate that murder in this game - while painted as a necessary evil via lines like "there was no other way" - isn't completely written off as just another wanton act of regular video game violence. the first two men you kill feels genuinely harrowing. likewise there are moments where you have a "choice" to kill/let someone die and while there's no morality system characters may remark upon it and in those moments you can feel Amicia grappling with her actions. it made me wish the game put more thought into non-violent combat and scaled back the amount of encounters where you 100% have to brain a guard with a rock/sic rats on them (and by the end the game feels like it just said fuck it, kill everyone). a missed opportunity but possibly because of how considered it felt at other times.