When it comes to looking at a brand new game there are I few things that I keep an eye out for, call it my litmus test for predicting the compatibility between me and the game in question. The title isn't really important because I'm the kind of weirdo into games with the most obnoxious titles, so I really have no leg to stand on in that argument. ('VA-11 Hall-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action' anybody?) What grabs me is the style of the presentation, the intrigue of the trailer and the promise of the concept. Three simple keys to what I would consider a successful marketing campaign, at least to my little brain. Thus it excites me to say that Dustborn, another title from the Future Games conference, managed to tick a good number of those boxes.
Immediately it's easy to see that this game has taken significant visual cues from the same handbook as Borderlands, with the same cartoon-esque cell shaded visuals. Dustborn merely boasts significantly softer lines, otherwise those two titles could pretty much twins be of one another. Additionally, the actual character design behind that cell shading doesn't appear to be as loud as what Gearbox's cast of characters tend look like, so there's a little more uniformity to their general shape. That doesn't mean the characters themselves look indistinct, however, or even that grounded as there is one fellow who is quiet literally a robot and another lady who appears to have the Penguin's glass eye monocle. Regardless I think a good argument could be made for considering Borderlands a significant source of inspiration (at least in presentation) as the teaser trailer literally consists of a bus-ride introduction to everyone just like Borderlands did. (Except they don't start ghost-boxing with the camera. Strange, I thought everyone did that on long bus rides...)
Another immediately noticeable element of the game is how important music seems to be for it, in that I'd assume this were a rhythm action game if it hadn't been for the slight millisecond of gameplay in this teaser. (Even then, it still might be. This is 2020 afterall, much worse twists have already befallen us.) Practically every character shown off is teased playing around with some sort of instrument and the trailer itself even leads in with the prototypical "One, two, three, four!" that you'd expect to hear preceding the debut performance of a garage rock band. The official Steam page seems to highlight some points from the trailer too, specifically how the game is about "Hope, adventure, love, robots - and the power of words." And by 'power' they are being literal as we see the player literally Fus Ro Dah's some folks simply by throwing the cartoon text 'Move' at them. I can see how this sort of set-up is merely a hop skip and a jump away from a 'the world can only be saved with music' sort of premise that you'd see in some angst-ridden teen drama, Styx's abominable concept album movie travesty, or 'Footloose' starring Kevin Bacon. (Wait, is that covered by 'angst ridden drama'? I dunno, I liked it.)
For the story we need to look no further than that Steam description I bought up, because the teaser was a little light on the more fine details. The year is 2030, (these 'far in the future' kind of stories feel like they're getting closer and closer.) which makes it 30 years after The Broadcast. Yep that's right, it's one of those games that's going to use vague terminology and off-kilter capitalisation in order to sell it's narrative. (My favourite.) The player is essentially a rebel called Pax who is your archetypal rebel, on a journey with a cast of fun characters, who I'm guessing are all somewhat rebellious, in order to fight, sneak and manipulate against the 'the authoritarian Justice' and 'fanatical Puritans'. (Actually, the game's description says you're just transporting a package but something tells me a little bit of 'fight the man' is gonna worm it's way in there too.)
So what we've essentially got on our hands is a Watch_Dogs 2 type premise, though with a sort of road trip slant to it in the vein of Final Fantasy XV. (Yes, all of my modern comparisons link back to games, and what?) My only hope is that these developers will perhaps do a better job of inhabiting the rebellious punk-rock spirit over Ubisoft's Watch_Dogs team who just 'hello fellow kids'-upped that whole thing. As for the road trip aspect, as that looks like it'll be the main drive for the narrative, I absolutely love it, why don't more games base themselves around road trips? It forces you to naturally explore more of the world, encourages diversity in environment and can even serve as a handy tool to measure ark progression for the various personalities. I loved how it was handled in FFXV and that alone actually has me quite interested in Dustborn already. (Despite the fact that the game sounds like they exhumed their title from some ill-fated Gearbox MOBA, or something...)
Speaking of traversing the world, the design of that world in the trailer is perhaps what spoke to me the most in the "This is something I should pay attention to" category. I already spoke about the similarities to Borderlands (something only reinforced by the abundance of Desert in the trailer) but I'm also finding some of the enemy design comfortingly familiar. The Justice, for example, seem to dress in this bulky, ugly armour with goggle eyes and a gross colour scheme; just like the majority of armours from 'Outer Worlds'. (And I like that game, so being reminded of it is a positive.) The designs of the crew are great as well, there're all that special brand of distinctive where you can identify them from the silhouette alone (as the trailer itself demonstrates) and I'm already getting a sense of who they are from their little mannerisms. These are characters I want to see more of and get to know, so that's a strong start.
Now this game didn't just pop up from nowhere, and the reason why I seem to be receiving everything that it's selling so positively is because I actually recognise the indie team working on it. Red Thread Games are actually the folk behind something of an old school cult classic in the Dreamfall series. Point and click adventure games that go back to the mid 2000's (or even earlier if you count 'The Longest Journey') and go all the way up to 2017. These ain't no first time newbies to game development, is what I'm saying, and what's more they've cut their teeth on narrative-driven adventure titles, so I feel they're fully within their abilities to make this Dustborn something decent if not great. (Just, you know, as long as they don't make it last 18 years again.) Now Dreamfall is a series I've been recommended for literally years now but I've just never bitten the bullet, so at this point I owe it to Red Thread to try one of their games and where better to start than the brand new one?
In conclusion, even in a teaser form Dustborn provides just enough in style and pedigree to tickle my particular fancy. And whilst I cannot personally speak to the talents of the folk involved with the game, they've been around pretty much forever (the team that is, they worked on Dreamfall and Longest Journey under 'Funcom') so the must have been doing something right. Perhaps a bit of personal guilt, from having not gotten involved in these games sooner, has seemed into my judgement a little here, but this is my blog and I never pretended to hold myself to journalistic standards. (else I'd be a 'games journalist', yuck) So I still want to see more out of the game and get a better idea for what it plays like, but I've already wishlisted it so I'm pretty much down to clown whatever they show off. (Unless it actually is a rhythm action game. It isn't, right?)
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