Scorn is curious

 One might even call it a case study...

Nope! Get out of my head low-effort IGN contributors! I want to talk about something of substance today! Ahem- what I mean to say is: I want to talk about Scorn. But first I need to say for the sake of prosperity that I haven't currently played Scorn and thus cannot judge the feeling of playing the thing, which is fine because this blog isn't explicitly about that. Besides, I've watched the entire game and it seems that's a more valid way of experiencing this game than it really should be- but I'm getting a bit ahead of myself, Scorn, in the beginning, was promise incarnate. It bought to life the grossly sexual abstract exoskeleton work of H.R.Geiger and realised it in stunning detail to the point where even the teaser trailers, devoid of gameplay as they were, felt like a tour through a digital art exhibition.

Almost through merit of being visually interesting alone, the game developed an aura of mystery and eccentricity where everyone who learnt of the game couldn't help but buzz about what the game might contain and the direction it may go. Because here's the thing, no game that looked so surreal had ever been realised in high fidelity before. The most you get in these sorts of styles or even more bizarre are the art games like 'Cruelty Squad' and 'LSD: Dream Emulator'. Both visually insane adventures but lacking that subtle touch of visual thematic purpose that a truly high budget 3D modelled world based on very evocative art can bestow. (Actually, with that being said: I do think Cruelty Squad's aesthetic does have some sickly confidant purpose behind it.) When you reach the point that your gameplay-less visual walkthrough teaser trailers are bumping around the heads of onlookers for months and even scratching on lists of 'most anticipated game'; you've either got yourself a solid gold opportunity splayed before you, or a hanging noose over your head.

Of course, some of that fame did come from the fact that this style of art was already made popular and not by the game developers. Famously Geiger's work was realised as the biomechanical design of the Xenomorph for Ridley Scott's seminal monster art-house-adjacent masterpiece, Alien. As well as the cultural design of the mysterious race who created these creatures, up until then known only as 'The Space Jockeys'. Borrowing from this same style of art did not breach any form of copyright with the Alien right's holders, the art exists in of itself regardless the cultural contextualisation that movies have thrust upon it, but it did draw unspoken parallels between the quality of Ridley Scott's near-timeless work and the as-of-yet untested talents of the team behind Scorn. An expectation that no-doubt weighed heavy on the heads of a team that kept pushing back and delaying Scorn as much as they could so they could ensure the final product was exactly what they envisioned. (Or, exactly what they thought the fans wanted.)

Hype didn't die down on this title like it does for some; instead it just seemed to build and fester in a ravenous hunger when the people realised the game they had built up in their heads as a swan song art house master piece was playing 'hard-to-get' with them. All this excitement and hubbub foamed up despite the fact that literally no one knew anything about what this game was and would contain. The only snippets of gameplay we saw featured grotesque firearm implements that didn't look particularly fun or interesting to shoot, unloading on enemies who appeared to have unfinished AI. (Nowhere near as unfinished as the AI in the reveal trailer for S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2; but bad enough to be concerning.) Such was the fever that it almost didn't register with people when the game stopped being pushed back, rolled up to it's release and then, recently, actually came out. I think we were all expecting a 'The Last Guardian' situation with this one and... well, there are parallels to be made...

Scorn's main source of gameplay is through it's various puzzles laid across the game world that bar you from progress until you interpret your way through some grotesque logical equation that typically does something you don't quite understand in an increadibly visually evocative way. The atmosphere of the game, it's greatest asset, is best served during moments when you are encouraged to observe and pull apart the world and environment, so this makes sense as a focus point. But it's also not exactly what the game presented itself as. The trailers demonstrated visually arresting exploration peppered with tiny moment of danger, not prolonged sections of logic quizzes. There's no problem with going that route, but maybe it should have been disclosed in marketing for the sake of clarity else you're setting up players for what appears to be a survival style game, and letting them down with a different experience entirely.

Speaking of those danger sections; one of Scorn's biggest gripes has been the gunplay which is, much as the trailers seemed to imply, pretty bad. In this sense it's very good that Scorn wasn't a survival style game, because if crucial moments of life and death were decided by functionally questionable weapons that require pinpoint depth perception it would be a very frustrating experience. Defenders will say that you're not supposed to fight the monsters and clearly the game wants you to avoid them; but games that don't want you to fight the monsters, like Outlast, Amensia and it's ilk, usually don't give you guns to kill the monsters with. That's... kind of basic concept design 101: give someone a tool, they're going to want to use it. There's no trying to excuse the bad combat by saying it isn't the point, it's a largely unfun system, it probably should have been cut.

And the most head scratching part of this is the way that Scorn, inexplicably, designs it's saving system as though it is a hardcore survival experience instead of a puzzle game through masterfully evocative environments. All saving is done at the beginning of chapters, and none of it is manual. The game tells you when you get a free break and can take long gaps between saves, making the player more and more anxious the longer they go without a save point. Such that when the monsters do appear, dying to them thanks to the poor combat comes with the high price of maybe an hour of lost time. Which is a spirit breaker for a lot of people out there. It's as if the saving in particular was built to accommodate a game that focused on high dangers high risk gameplay, but that game just got replaced with the Scorn we have today.

So is Scorn ultimately a disappointment? I think that, much like the Last Guardian, it really depends what you go in expecting. If you want to explore increadibly rendered environments that feel like the inside of an absurd art piece mixed with the unnerving aura of a world that defies your expectations; then that is what you're going to get. If the enigma that the creators fostered painted a false image of gameplay-driven horror with a Bioshock style survival world you learn to manipulate as you become more familiar with your surroundings... yeah, that's not Scorn at all. I suspect that, like Death Stranding, time is going to be kind to this game as future players enter the experience knowing a bit about what it is and coming to appreciate the game for that; but the mystery angle that all the marketing relied on built an impossible standard to match. This whole unveiling has left me nervously hoping my mysterious indie screen pleaser of choice, Atomic Heart, lives up to everything it promises to be.

Scorn

The perfect organism?

Once more I'm back to look through another recently unveiled game and see if I'm liking what I'm seeing so far. Although this particular game is rather unique to note as this isn't this game's unveiling, nor is it a big budget that we've already heard a great deal about. That is to say, we've heard whispers through the years but the pertinent reveals, such as a potential release date, is still very much in the dark for the public. The game in question is 'Scorn', and I have to say that as intrigued as the game does make me, I'm getting a little sick of the 'all tease, no delivery' approach that this game's marketing has taken. Although I'm getting ahead of myself a little, let me introduce this game to you as best I can.

Scorn is first-person horror title developed by Ebb Software with a huge emphasis on stylist environments and atmosphere. In fact, the game is based heavily on the works of H. R. Giger and Zdzisław Beksińsk; and whilst I may not know much about that latter gentleman, Giger's work is very familiar, just as it should be familiar to everyone, being the influence behind legendary horror flick: Alien. And you can see the same sort of identity plastered over everybit of Scorn's artwork, and indeed, this particular trailer. The whole bio-organic-mechanical aesthetic shines so brightly in every corner of this game to the point where it looks just like a Ridley Scott set, and to the point where it over-shines literally everything else about this game.

There's a reason why I haven't touched on anything regarding 'story' or 'themes' in this blog, and that's because in the several years that this game has been teased, none of that has ever been referenced at by the developers in the slightest. They've focused entirely on ensuring the look of the game is right, and there's nothing wrong with that, just as long as the rest of the game doesn't get completely lost in the effort. This is a similar fate that befell 'Agony' from a while back. It was another highly visual title which told it's audience nothing about the experience apart from the fact that it would revolve a decent into hell, thus justifying all the grotesque, demonic and psycho-sexual imagery that the trailers all revelled in. The aesthetics were great and everyone knew that, but no one had any idea what the actual game would look or play like and that was because the game itself turned out be rather lame and lackluster, taking all the potential that the trailers built up and wasting it. That's something it's so easy to forget when creating an art-house experience, that the demands of the medium still need to be met. (In this instance: that the game still needs to be good.)

One developer who I feel is great at treading this line is From Software with their Souls games. All of these games boast highly thematic visual styles, sophisticated storytelling and all manner of aspects that could easily smother marketing, but the team know to balance as much artistic indulgence as they can with that which audiences want; gameplay. Dark Souls is a franchise built upon the bedrock of themes like decay, stagnancy and renewal, but they are also great, sound games that built an entire genre on the backs of their gameplay. That's something that 'Scorn' really needs, maybe not ideas strong enough to build a genre around, but at least gameplay ideas familiar enough to get excited about. Right now, I'm just seeing a very pretty looking tour through a disconcerting metal/flesh hellscape, whereas I should be seeing a game.

All that being said, the trailer for Scorn was, just as every trailer in the Inside Xbox event, intended to showcase the fidelity of the Series X hardware and to that I will admit it all looked good. It's hard to really critique the realism of imagery as vastly wild and imaginary as Giger paintings, but I'll give the developers enough credit to say that their environments look more real than the sets I've seen in the Alien films, so there's an achievement I guess. For those that look for a visual treat out of their games (and who don't mind mild gross out) I'd imagine that this trailer must be a nectar for you, and with everything this game showcases I fully understand such a yearning. But at the end of the day you could tell me that this was the trailer for the latest Blumhouse movie and I'd never know. (Although I suppose you could argue that given Blumhouse's usual quality, that's not exactly a criticism.)

"But wait" I hear you cry, "hasn't Scorn received an actual gameplay trailer in the past?" Indeed it has, my intrepid historian, and it dropped as recently as a full three years ago. (There's a title that knows how to keep it's audience on their toes; they've got no clue when the next substantial trailer will drop) I've watched through this before and I glanced over it again to see if my opinion was any different, but still I find myself largely underwhelmed. Don't get me wrong, it means the world to actually see how a game like this will function, but that's just it; I don't think the gameplay from this trailer really resembles the vision of the team at all. (Which might explain why we haven't see anything else of it's like since.) That pre-alpha footage mostly just followed the usual game's exploration and 'look at how gross this monster is' pattern, before showing us an actual encounter with gunplay. And it's weird.

Now a title that calls itself as a horror game is well within it's rights to have a combat system, in fact I'd prefer it if they do (it makes the gameplay feel like there's more at stake) but it just feels a little off when that's all the gameplay shows; everything else lacks any semblance of horror to it beyond mildly disconcerting imagery. There's no control over the sounds the player hears, no building sense of foreboding, no creeping terrors in the dark; just a gunfight with a flesh-firearm. Even the mysterious nature of the environments falls short because the world looks so outlandish and beyond the realms of reality that it's hard to relate to these surroundings on any level that makes the horror feel 'real'. Now of course, all this I'm basing from a trailer, it could be that the full game has all of these, or completely innovates on horror games in an as-of-so-far unseen manner, but I can't comment on what might be the case when I have to take into account all that is the case; and right now, Scorn just doesn't seem scary or even sufficiently unsettling for what is ostensibly a 'horror' title. (Aside from that frighteningly long and obfuscating reload animation, that'll get a few cheese deaths if it makes it to the final game.)

So am I being a little unfair towards Scorn? Probably. The game looks stunning in the visual department, but I'm a staunch opponent of style over substance so that plain just will not fly with me, at least not alone. The fact that Scorn showed up in an Xbox event that prioritised visuals doesn't surprise me, but it does disappoint me. I get it, the developers want to show off all they have achieved with this game, but perhaps it's time for a different, more informative, approach in the future. Besides how I may have made it seem, I'm nowhere near ready to write off 'Scorn' just yet, I absolutely love their style and pray they can do it justice; but after the mess that was 'Agony' I'm cautious and will continue to be unless given good reason to be otherwise. (So please give me that reason, Ebb Software. Please!)