Vampyr Review

 We are not dead. We are something else entirely.

It is a bitter pill to swallow, acknowledging that the Vampire RPG game that you founded this very blog speaking about is never going to have it's triumphant sequel.  Like the blood-starved citizens it references, Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines 2 seems cursed by the High Wills never to see the light of day, nor catch the shimmering reflection of it's pride, ever. I've never been one to happily and easily swallow my medicine either; my own body rebels at the order, my throat will go so far as to seal itself shut if it has to. So that wound is better not salved, but handily papered over with another Vampire themed Role Playing game so as to disguise the disfiguring so that it may fester and grow gangrenous away from my catching eye. Hurray for unhealthy compartmentalising! Although coming from my thirty-odd hour playthrough of Vampyr, I wonder if maybe I chose the right replacement game. (Swansong is out; I could have easily fed my VTMB thirst through that.)

Instead I ended up with Vampyr, an action-based vampire game set in London in 1918 at the height of the Spanish Flu epidemic. You play as recent Kindred- oops, sorry that's my 'Vampire: The Masquerade' verbiage, still firmly lodged in my frontal cortex, they use the word 'Ekon'- so you play as the recently Ekon-ified doctor Johnathon Ried who is, yes, a specialist in blood transfusion... urgh. (I wish I could say that was a passing wink and a nod; but his work in blood literally becomes central to the entire running narrative and is bought up often enough to the point you have to stop rolling your eyes at it.) Going into this game all I knew about it was that the developers behind the game were DONTNOD Entertainment, which puzzled me at the time of this game's announcement because all I thought I knew of their work was Life is Strange, and my tenuous relationship with that series. It was only after the fact that I looked into their work an realised that DONTNOD made lukewarm and ironically forgettable action platformer game; Remember Me.

Right away I'm happy to report that Vampyr is heaps more memorable than that game, which built itself on the premise of mind manipulation and utterly failed to flesh out anything else interesting about it's identity for the game's entire runtime. For one, Vampyr wins on style points as it boasts a handsome Victorian vampire sporting a suspiciously modern hairstyle. (Seriously; I know that the 1910's were the age of the hair wax pomade, but boasting that alongwith a side fade and a pointed beard? Reid looks like he spends his weekends off from the Pembrooke giving lectures at Blackwall Academy. Which... he totally could have been doing, he's a vampire.) And for two it has a genuinely unique framework for it's gameplay loop which supports the underlying themes of the narrative to the point where I was actually playing as the game wanted me do despite starting my playthrough actively edging towards trying to undermine it.

Vampyr also features a story which exceeded my admittedly meagre expectations to keep me at least remotely invested throughout it's length, which really pulled some weight when the thigh-deep world building started to come up a little short nearer to the back half of this storyline. I know I'm a bit spoilt coming from the expansive river of vampire lore from 'Masquerade', touched by countless dozens of inspired authors over many different projects, but sometimes I feel Vampyr's frail attempts to plant the routes of it's own vampire lore start to either come up disappointingly short or run away in strange angles that I'm not convinced the team ever sought a second opinion on. If you told me that a single writer focused on the world building and ancillary setting whilst the others focused on characters and narrative, I would totally believe you.

At it's face, Vampyr is a story about being made a Vampire rather suddenly and searching for the mysterious figure that sired you. A bare basic narrative for a vampire story which thankfully gets shelved into the 'B-plot' once we start focusing more on the Spanish flu and a wave of barbaric vampiric-offshoots called Skals that are infesting the city, and a slightly confused narrative thread that seems to incidentally equate the two diseases as indistinguishable until the running story thread just shrugs it's shoulders and outright connects the two. And I have to admit; working to discover the fictional mysterious secret source behind a real viral pandemic from the late 1910's is actually pretty interesting. That lens of fiction-based-on-history elevates a lot of what would otherwise be a fairly cookie-cutter narrative into a genuine page turner. (Or controller picker-upper; to transmute that context.)

How this plays out is in a well conceived but clumsily executed gameplay cycle of investigation marred by necessary bouts of action fighter gameplay that never quite feels as good as you want it to. Somewhat fittingly given the specialisation of the development team, I think the investigation portion of this world, as well as the 'web of social interaction system' which underlies it, is inspired and actually pretty strong. And the combat is a 'Witcher 3-like' dodge and stab affair that feels a bit heavy and fiddle-some when you pick it up, settles into 'serviceable' as you get used to it, and shrivels into a tedious annoyance as the enemies become more varied and resourceful and the repertoire at your disposal stays mostly static. For a combat system to play the exact same way at hour 3 that it does in hour 30 is perfectly fine if you've got a great system, but when it's only okay- that becomes one of the flagship reasons why I don't think I can bring myself to pick up this game ever again for a replay.

The extent of the issue is really this. When you're not socialising, investigating, or playing doctor, you're attempting to do any of those things which better suit this game's identity whilst being beset by endless hoards of either Vampire-Skals or vampire hunters on every street corner. It is no exaggeration that simply in travelling the streets of London you'll be forced to murder hundreds of annoying NPCs that stand around like human roadblocks and litter the path. You know that feeling in a JRPG when you're crossing the tall grass and the screen flashes and you just want to scream "For the love of god, can I please just get from A to B"? That's this entire game in a nutshell. Combat that you simply endure being forced upon you hour after hour until you're planning your routes through the streets of London specially to avoid high spawn density. Needless to say; this doesn't feel like a very natural world to navigate. (Having lived in South London myself, however; I will relay that down here we do, in fact, have to wade through hoards of crazed violent men in order to pop round the shops at night; it's just the daily tribulations of life.)

The combat of Vampyr is your standard third person stamina-based slashing game with anicllary vampiric abilities that are acquired at level-up and fuelled by a blood gauge you refill by biting staggered enemies. Staggering occurs by breaking a stagger gauge, that reinforces itself to be stronger each time you break it. Staggers reward you only with a small window to bite and not really an opportunity for damage dealing, making it all but useless in a prolonged bout aside from the fact that blood is the only reliable way of healing aside from using items. Items suffer from the game's constant autosaving mechanics which is designed to make sure you can't go back on your choices, but means that expensive restorative items which are expended in a big battle that you end up losing, won't be refunded. This is somewhat similar to how Dark Souls does it, except that Dark Souls is built to encourage this idea of personal investment of items and the risk involved, and thus From Software builds it systems so that most consumable stockpiles can easily be restored by just killing a few of the right enemies in a farming adventure. Vampyr has you painstaking craft each elixir by gathering ingredients for expensive recipes that are randomly awarded to you after battles in infinitesimal amounts, or buying those ingredients with shillings, that are similarly rare. I'm a breed of gamer who already has trouble using limited resources when they're in trouble, and Vampyr reinforced that fear with gusto.

Bosses are when the combat of Vampyr starts to get a little bit interesting, as most standard NPCs are merely an annoyance. Now most every boss apart from a couple is a suped up version of a moveset that will presently become NPC standard after that particular encounter, and so aren't all that unique in themselves. Some have a few special mechanics such as avoiding flashes of light across the stage or managing never-ending trash spawns, (God I hate unending trash spawns in boss fights) and a few are just high health bar enemies who can absorb high amounts of damage. Some of these fights were actually challenging, the last one got me sweating a little, but all them suffer from the handling of Johnathon himself. Johnathon moves just cumbersome enough to make you feel unagile next to your opponents and his attacks for some weapons seem to correspond in just delayed enough of a fashion to sometimes feel unresponsive. Now know I'm talking about a hairline inconsistency here, one that would absolutely never be noticed in most games, but for one which relies so much on it's petty fights between objectives, every flaw stands out like a sore thumb. Also, though this was a problem I couldn't replicate with reliability so it might have been a bug, there appeared to be a light issue of 'action queing', where you press a couple of buttons and the game commits to the second action before the first is committed, forcing you into an animation you otherwise would like to be reactive during. So watch that panic pressing, I suppose.

Difficulty in the game is controlled mostly through a totally divorced from context levelling system which denotes enemies becoming stronger as the game goes on for no explainable reason. Levels decide how much damage the player does, with the closer you are to the enemies level dictates how close to your own max damage output each attack does. This is a bit of an artificial way to control difficulty, as the game can only really turn that dial up by kicking enemies to a much higher level than you, because any one who matches you in level, even bosses, are hardly more than a gnat to be rolled over. Enemies that are ten levels above you, however, take absolutely no damage and will almost always on-hit kill you. So there's no moment of sound balance. For some reason, when base damage is untouched, every encounter is laughably easy, which speaks to a problem with balancing that the team resolved rather crudely. 

I think there's no better example of this crudeness than the level up abilities, which all present largely un-transformative powers (apart from the blood heal. That one's pretty much essential) you unlock and then improve the stats of, although only at base values, not related to your weapon damage output, so as enemies get more powerful your abilities become more useless throughout the game. Some, like the percentage of damage that bites do, never have the opportunity to be useful at all, because by the time you've got enough exp to make it 'strong', enemies are so powerful is still hardly scratches at their health bar. And, amazingly for an action RPG, there are absolutely no upgrade modules related to improving defence stats! This means there's no way to buff your absorption of hits, and no way to deal with the two different damage types that are introduced throughout the game, flame and poison damage. (I equate 'sun' to flame damage. The effect is similar.) On the hardest difficulty, this means there are fights were getting poisoned once is an actual death sentence as you have no recourse but to just stand there and watch your health bar disintegrate into nothingness before your eyes. You feel just as flimsy at level one as you do by level thirty! All of these issues and oddities converge to form a combat system which can keep you busy from checkpoint to checkpoint, but never really feels exciting or empowering. And with as much respawning enemies as there are between checkpoints, and the fact the game won't let you open doors or gates if you've got an enemy sniffing up your butt, it won't be long before you're dreading each encounter as a tedious roadblock to the progression of the real game.

But once you do force your way through these armies, you're treated to the very comprehensive, and well made, social interaction system. Every non-violent NPC in this game is unique and developed with their own backstory, secrets, and social circles. Whether in service of your overall narrative or simply to satisfy your own noisiness, you can interrogate citizens about their lives in order to unlock clues that unravel more details on them or others in their circle, so that you naturally dig into who they are and what they're hiding. Some clues can also be gained by finding hidden documents around the world, or triggering an eavesdropping minigame. Oddly for a game about being a doctor, this creates a very robust 'investigation' gameplay system which would suit a private investigator video game like a tailored glove.

Of course there is a vampiric twist to this system, and in Vampyr that comes in the form of 'Blood Quality'. The various denizens of London are marked and ranked by their 'Blood Quality level' which starts off as a fraction of what it could be and rises as you learn more about them for some reason which is never made clear. This 'quality' directly relates to the amount of XP you can gain from drinking their blood, and considering that's your main source for levelling up, getting that quality level close to full before you go drinking is a must. Neatly, this means that it is in the best interests, even of an evil route player, to do specific character side quests before they go snacking; wrapping the quest design into the gameplay loop with the sort of deftness I wish the entire game was bound by.

Another potential detriment to blood quality, hinting how important of a factor it is in the meta game of Vampyr, is illness. One of the selling points of Vampyr is managing the dichotomy of being a doctor bound by the Hippocratic oath, who must sustain himself to the detriment of other's wellbeing. They practically print that on the box. Reading that, and expecting the bare minimum, I assumed that particular dynamic to be paid basic lip-service in the narrative before I simply ignored it and went on a murder spree. Vampyr, again rather cleverly, found a way to gamify that system. Everytime you rest to pass the night, something you need to do in order to expend the exp you've collated, various citizens will be struck with illness, thanks to that pesky Spanish flu, either randomly or spreading from other untreated carriers left from the night before. These illnesses corrupt the blood quality levels and damages the overall health of the district, meaning that the player is incentivised to brew remedies and heal patients, sometimes for the express purpose of getting them healthy enough for you to kill them. Elegantly designed- but there's a problem.

You see, managing the 'state' of the London districts is the metagame of Vampyr, and it means overseeing a sliding scale of troubles that is effected by actions you take in the main story or individually. If you decide to redeem the exp waiting in the veins of a healthy resident (an action which always kills them, for some reason. Vampires of this age don't know how to take a small sip in order to maintain their food sources, apparently. That's the industrial age for you folks, unchecked consumerism personified.) that will have a detrimental effect on the scales and tip it towards collapse, as will not treating illness. Curing illness slightly cures the district, as do some story actions I believe. Which means that the only real way to combat the ticking time bomb across the city, which progresses everytime you consult the level-up screen, is to cure people. And this is where the tedium which is housed in so many otherwise decent systems of this game, lies.

When someone becomes ill they do so from their various districts housed around the game world, typically at safe zones in the centre of various winding streets of endlessly spawning enemies. There is no fast travel in the game, meaning that everytime you want to level up you're expected to do a fifty minute loop of the city to make house calls to all potential patients, whilst piling bodies of vampire hunters in the interim. And just to pour fresh gasoline on the caustic wounds, the game refuses to show you where NPCs are on the overmap. Meaning you need to remember in what parts of this decently big city each character likes to frequent, and if they displace as the result of some quest and you can't find them; you can expect to wander around for the next twenty minutes with 'video game vision' on until you track them down. So that's how a decent idea of gamifying a core concept of the premise slips into a mind numbing chore the game lumps ontop of you to keep up with. A chore which stops you from progressing the game if you have any intention of managing these districts. (Which is one of the only ways that the good/bad endings of the games are decided unless you ignore the moral ambiguity that the narrative tries to take you on and select the developer's pre-decided 'good' narrative choices in order to pursue the 'ultra good' ending. One of these decisions is literally letting a man painfully die from internal injuries instead of ending their suffering. Seems DONTNOD have some very interesting ideas on the concept of being 'morally upstanding'.)

As hinted earlier, I also had a lot of trouble getting into the wider lore of this vampire-centric world that DONTNOD created, which reminded me a little bit of Twilight in how it embraces a vampire-dominant mythical world and overeggs that pie whilst giving everything else lip service. You'll be attacked by giant shaggy wolf-life beasts and get told they're just a particularly animalistic strain of vampirism. (Instead of, ya know; a Werewolf!) You'll learn that Vampires can apparently procreate. I don't mean the biting way either; I'm talking sexual reproduction. Which I would take as a bizarre reference to one of the more nonsensical plot lines from Twilight, but it's mentioned twice from different sources; that is an aspect of their lore. And in a particularly baffling scene that I can only assume is a total oversight from the developers, one of your close vampire buddies places the Dr Reid's hand on her chest so that he can feel her heart beat, a gesture of endearment. Only, hang on- she's a vampire! Why is her heart beating? The scene even makes you see it in 'vampire vision' so you can literally watch her heart beat. And the reason I say that in particular is an oversight and not a bizarre nook of the lore, is because that same character later makes a reference to the fact that vampires don't have beating hearts- but how do you make that mistake in the first place?

The only explanation which makes sense of all this weirdness in my head is that there was no central creative authority on what the rules of this universe are, which results in a very wishy-washy world that doesn't hold up to the slightest bit of scrutiny. Vampires can procreate? How do they produce sperm out their bodies on a diet of just blood; how do they menstruate without a pumping bloodstream. And if their hearts are supposed to work just fine; then what the hell about these monsters is even dead in the first place? They are undead, right? The verbose rhetoric of dialogue chuffs over itself reiterating the 'undead' nature of their affliction time and time again, but apparently by every medically observable metric, this universe's vampires are merely sun-sensitive weirdoes that are on a blood-only diet! All of this was a reoccurring source of frustration for me until I realised something; DONTNOD aren't trying to make a world. Whereas most modern games and movies and TV shows are all entries in some sprawling expansive franchise that has to play by rules set out by dozens of unconnected writers whilst introducing their own snippets to propel their individual story; Vampyr is it's own thing. It's an off-shoot. A one off. The wider world doesn't have to make sense because it's not detailing a real bigger world we'll someday get to explore in future entries, and it's not supposed to. Does that forgive the lore being non-sensical or internally contradicting? No. But it softens the egregiousness of the wrong. At least in my mind. I came to peace with it.

Which allowed me to focus on the main narrative and the goofiness there. Now the majority of the main story is decently straight forward and easy to follow, even if it gets a little off the rails in the third act. (That final boss really didn't have to be so 'apocalyptic stakes' and 'mythical') I was also supremely let down by the wrap up of the B-plot, which is such a limp end that the game just throws it at you on the way to finish the game. Also, what starts as a morality tale kind of wraps itself up by the middle of the game without telling the audience, and from that point on Johnathon is driven almost entirely by his promise to single handily cure the Spanish flu, (Which starts to feel more like a personal pride thing after a while) a spotty set of pocket-book morals that he enforces sporadically and yet with the dogmatism of a zealot whenever he remembers them, and, enduringly, his desire to get his undead noodle wet. Or however that works down there in this topsy turvey world of vampiric trimesters, I try not think about it. I'm not adverse to that kind of story beat, in fact I like them when they're done well; but this one felt supremely ill-fitting and weird. I'm not saying they didn't have chemistry or anything, I just don't know why my vampire story needs a love sub/adjacent-to-main plot.

In summation, Vampyr is an effort to bring solid action gameplay to DONTNOD's usual narrative based choices-have-consequences formula and the result was a serviceable title which outstays it's welcome long before the credits roll. So many great ideas in the foundation of this game are let down by the combat which the game relies so heavily on, and even the narrative elements are victim to DONTNOD's questionable writing which makes their games so endlessly fun to poke fun at. Although whereas I'm usually lovingly critical of their model, something about Vampyr's uneven split of action to narrative tips me over into being genuinely annoyed at the shortcomings. Honestly, I wouldn't recommend this game unless you're really desperate for a vampire game and have exhausted the VTM library. Although there are elements I like here, and some embers of promise, ultimately all the pitfalls prevents me from giving Vampyr anything more than a D+ Grade on my esoteric marking scale. I commend DONTNOD from stepping out of their comfort zone and trying something they're not good at, although I'm not sure if I'd recommend they do it more in the future. At least not into action games again. Maybe a strategy narrative game, like Dragon Commander? They'll figure it out, they are all a creative, if strange, bunch.

Life is Strange: True Colours

 And that's why I love you

I have a very interesting relationship with Life is Strange, DONTNOD's claim to fame. If by 'interesting relationship' you mean a guilty-like seeped in waves of mediocrity that has me forever torn between wanting to go back to it and wanting to delete it from my memory banks. I think I've touched on it before, but I honestly couldn't impart my full opinion on LIS in an orderly fashion unless I literally did a full blown episode by episode breakdown to show you the waves of my sanity slowly melting away as the series went on. Although to be brief, I was intrigued by the premise and found the characters to be fine at the very start, as the episodes went on the premise slowly opened up but clearly fell by the wayside in favour of characterisation which bordered on trite at times, and that final episode was a total degradation of any sort of coherent narrative when it comes to the premise, making it abundantly clear that the team had no idea what they were doing when they started and the whole 'mystery' they proposed in episode 1 was made on ill faith. But I still like it.

Maybe it's the Stockholm effect. I was with the game episode by episode for so very long that after the fact I can't imagine my life without it, if I played it any longer I'd start wearing beanies and develop a music taste informed solely by bands who make so few sales that they have to live out of their touring bus. (The second they can afford a motel room they're dead to me!)Whatever the case I can't exactly say that LIS is a bad game, because I actually think it was very competently made and actually proposed some pretty cool narrative concepts at times that I don't regret going through. I just think the team dropped the ball in the home stretch and thus sort of sullied the memory in doing so, at least in my mind. I still think back to the game fondly, however, and when I see a new game on the horizon I'll take the time to give it a good 'ol look.

And yet somehow I didn't get around to playing 'Before the Storm' or even the dully named 'Life is Strange 2'. (You know, the one which shared neither any characters nor any creative threads with the first title and thus did not at all earn the moniker '2'? Didn't play that game.) So I guess my lingering good will and fond memories didn't extend to any degree where it counts, but luckily for DONTNOD I appear to be the anomaly amidst their fans, because they're brand of game development seems to be treating them well. In the wake of the oversaturation and subsequent death of Telltale games ("Do you believe in the resurrection, Latavious?") DONTNOD became the de facto seneschals over all things choice-based story game related, and though every single fibre of their being is owed to the path paved by The Walking Dead Telltale game, we look now to them for keeping the genre alive. Funny how life works out sometimes, isn't it?

Thus I'll admit it's in the pursuit of seeing the state of the choice-based story genre which I used to invest so much in that I've tuned onto the wavelength of this 'Life is Strange: True Colours' game in the hopes that it can be all I wanted the original to be. And as a dropped off fan of this series, I'll say that the team have managed to get me back through the door and interested; I want to know what's going on and am willing to actually play the game in order to find out. (That's right, DONTNOD, I tried to get out but you kept pulling me back in; bully for you!) I see genuine potential in what we've seen so far and think that both the overall story and individual set pieces could be simply insane if the team take as full advantage of this as I know they want to. 

True Colours follows Alex Chen, another teenage girl imbued with otherworldly abilities that will absolutely not got explained by the otherend of this game. (At least the storytellers might be smart enough not to tease about the mystery this time) And what is this ability, you ask? Max from the first game could freakin' turn back time to a limit degree, if she had a little more ambition to her should could have been an S-tier Stand user! Well this Alex character has the superpower of Empathy- and what? No it's not that stupid, she has the ability to see the 'aura' of those around her (represented in bubbles of different colours. Get it?) and thus ascertain the emotions that they are feeling at any given time. She sees this as a 'curse' and it- No wait, I'm sorry that is just basic empathy and a decent perception for reading others turned into a superpower... Yeah, on paper this is a hard sell.

In actuality Alex is looking into the truth behind her brother's apparently accidental death, which serves as the impetus to learn her power as she sees the secrets that others want to keep quiet. The interesting part, and something that has me reeling at the possibilities, is where she taps into the more 'empath' parts of her power and can feed extreme emotions in order to unravel them. One example we saw was of a woman fraught with anger, whom Alex 'bewitched' and made her emotion so powerful that is was actually manipulating and effecting reality around her, something which the protagonist commented could be dangerous enough to kill her! That's actually a ripe tool for some interactive story telling elements where you can let players really enter the deepest emotions of those around you and swim around their worlds, it makes for a decently unique and fecund storytelling opportunity that the team have lined up for themselves.

Of course, this new DONTNOD protagonist wouldn't be worth their salt if it weren't for the 'hipter' edge that they are contractually obligated to conjure up, and so this teenager also doubles as a singer, and her key art even features her with headphones around her neck and is that a flannel shirt I see teased in the background? What I'm saying is, prepare for a an almost oppressively obscure smattering of licenced indie songs in the soundtrack full to the brim of- wait, they licenced Radiohead? Seriously? Well damn, guys, now I can't even make the hipster jokes anymore, they're an actually established band! They at the very least better be a slew of characters with painfully outdated 'young people' jargon in their lexicon to rival the heights of 'hella girl' Chloe Price.

Apparently this is the brand new venture for the award winning Life is Strange formula, and I have to say I'm liking what I'm seeing. The premise seems promising, the world looks pretty and the soundtrack has Radiohead, what else could you want? Of course, Square decided to sully this announcement with the reveal of a 'remaster' for Life is Strange 1, which I'm not going to lie looks a little gross. How does 'remastering' the look of that game, which could certain use a visual improvement, evolve into giving the characters too much makeup? I'm being serious, Max looks like she's bathing in eyeliner before every scene, as though her entire contrived 'indie artist' personality wasn't already enough. Everyone else takes it a little easier with the face paint, but they're still just so shiny. Where went the subtlety and soft colours of the original design ethos, which matched the mellow soundtrack and the sleepy no-where-America town of Arcadia Bay? And why does Max looks like she's a box of talcum powder away from auditioning at the circus? (Why they gotta do my main girl like that?) Ah well, the new game still looks- £50 for preorder? Wow- sorry, my eyes were watering for a moment there. Full retail price, huh? Yep- that's totally fine. (Oof, that's gonna hurt the ol' wallet)

Tell Me Why

Ain't nothin' but a heartache

DONTNOD entertainment have carved out quite a reputation for themselves over their relatively short 12 years being active, to the point where some would even refer to their games as a 'type'. Personally, I've been cognisant of just about every single one of their game launches, so it might be a bit bias of me to claim how big they've become in image alone, but even in exaggeration there is a hint of truth. Starting with 'Remember Me' back in 2013, I remember distinctly not being too impressed with their game on a good few levels, not least of all for the narrative which I thought was messy and failed to stick to it's own rules. Lo and behold, here we are in 2020 and they've carved themselves into a studio renowned for their narrative-based games and storytelling- all the while still failing to stick to their own established narrative rules every now and then. (Guess that's a thing people like now?) Thus it's little surprise that their latest project, 'Tell Me Why', follows suit.

Perhaps best known for the work in the Life is Strange games, DONTNOD have developed something of a routine; mounting interesting premises and then completely scrapping what made that curious in favour of character driven narratives. (Not saying that's a bad thing, each to their own. Just feel like they could work harder in marrying those two sides of their narratives.) Whatsmore than that; they've also established this distinct visual style for comic book-esque visuals with a smooth, almost airbrushed, finish. This doesn't make it into all their games (which is for the best, I don't see this working so well in Vampyr) but it has for this new title 'Tell Me Why' which works both for and against this title. On the positive, it's a pleasing aesthetic to look at that doesn't shoot for total visual fidelity and yet is pretty enough to be it's own style. On the otherhand this style has been used exclusively on 'Life is Strange' properties up until now, thus that inherently ties 'Tell Me Why' with NODS' reputation for confused inconsistent and oddly fantastical storytelling, when I get the impression that this title wants to be a little more serious and grounded. (Then again, these are the guys who introduced then ignored a plot point involving a surprise second moon, so I should know better than to think I've got their number.)

The premise itself is actually quite intriguing on the surface, which is why I'm interested in giving this story a shot. It follows these Ronan twins making their way back to their hometown to come to terms with their 'troubling' childhood trauma with the hopes of getting to the bottom of it so that they can both move on with their lives. Seems simple enough, but when that trauma seems to involve their mother suddenly attacking one of the kids, Tyler, with a shotgun and then ending up dead; the seeds of a mystery start to lay themselves. Now as it just so happens, these twins have a supernatural bond whenever they are close to one another, (Because DONTNOD can't help but bog down their own stories with ancillary supernaturalism) but the way this manifests does have the potential to prove a satisfying framing device for the story, so I won't ride them too hard until the final chapter comes out and they completely bottle it with a spiral into nonsense. (I'm grumpy this morning.)

The twins actually have the ability to see flashes of the past whenever the are struck with intense emotion, and I will concede; that's quite apt for story like this. In the way that the story appears to be laid out, there's a cold-case of a mystery who's details played out years ago when both the protagonists were still naive children who couldn't have accurately comprehended the world around them. With this power, however, it allows them to revisit moments like those with the perspective of adulthood to really comprehend these events and learn the truth behind them. That's super cool and a clever implantation of the abnormal. This likely also extends to seeing events that neither of them were there to witness, as that's the only way I can see them truly unravelling the mystery of what really happened the night of the attack. I'll be honest, this sounds like an interesting mystery with the potential to really subvert and surprise if it's handled right.

Of course, the glue of the game which will pull it all together isn't in it's mystery but rather in the relationship between the twin protagonists. (I think we've yet to get a really seminal 'unravel-the-mystery' game in the industry and I very much doubt DONTNOD will make the first.) Both of these protagonists are positioned to have spent a very large part of their growing up apart from each other, likely under different foster homes, so in reuniting and coming to solve this mystery we have a story that purposes to tell the re-connection of these characters in the present as well as to their shared past. Now whilst I may mock DONTNOD for their failings, may that never be misconstrued to say that I disparage their efforts of telling character stories because they can do that, and do it well. In fact, I get annoyed when their other stuff gets in the way of solid character interactions and emotional building. So for these twin's relationship to be the beating heart of the story is a definitive move in the right direction for this studio's talents, in my opinion.

Something that I'd feel remiss in failing to discuss, though more in line with the studio's talents in general over this specific game, is the quality of the world design that I've noticed from these developers. This title marks their latest milestone in this regard but even all the way back in the original Life is Strange they've coveted this unique eye for building very terrestrial and realistic world spaces that feel lived in. Even when the graphical splendour isn't quite as exploited as it might be, such as in this trailer which I feel has a, perhaps purposely, duller palette, they've always managed to craft this slices of life into the narratives which deftly enriches the lives of the people so integral to these plotlines. Even looking around their old family house you can read the story off the walls and on the desks, this is an art of environment that DONTNOD have slowly been getting better at and in the glimpses of this game that I've seen I think they just might have reached a height as immersive as 'Gone Home'. And if you remember my thoughts on that game's environment you'll know I offer high praise.

Though if I have one huge fear going into this game, it's the same shortcoming that DONTNOD borrowed from their genre influencer, Telltale Games; I don't think the choices will matter. Now don't get me wrong, DONTNOD and Telltale both dived into choice based narrative games and made something impressive for the times that those games existed, but the genre grew distinctly stagnant in the barrage of choice-based games that came after to the point where it was hard to see how the game-type had grown. Choice that felt impactful in the days of Life is Strange 1, (which I feel bad about spoiling so I won't) just feel hollow today, and we reach the point that unless a decision has the ability to drastically shift the direction of the story, rather than just hit you with an immediate consequence and solider on, we feel a little underwhelmed. DONTNOD have a habit of leaving all their big choices till the end, and that's just a little too late to justify the concept in my book. Now they have no impetus to change things on my account, of course, but I hope that with the reputation they're receiving as the, currently, sole purveyor of high-quality choice-based adventures, they'd take it upon themselves to push the artform a little, even if just as a test. (Imagine a serious tale that diverged as wildly as 'The Henry Stickman Collection' or 'A Heist with Markiplier'; now that'd be the game to turn heads!)

But I'm sure what DONTNOD have at their disposal right now is entirely serviceable. In fact, I can attest to that with some evidence as, during the writing of this article, the first episode of this three-part journey is out and people seem to be enjoying it. Theirs is a studio with a somewhat unique talent for portraying realistic relationships and interpersonal drama, and the more they play to that strength I hope translates for more success for them. As an amateur writer myself I feel a little invested in the plight of this plucky studio, and wish them the best in their endeavours especially as narrative-driven gaming isn't as widespread as I would hope in today's age. Here's one studio that's changing that one story at a time and I salute them for their efforts. Also, the game's real cheap on Steam right now; Pick it up if your so inclined; support the storytellers.