I'm watching you Sons of the Forest

 And I like what I'm seeing

I've always had a fascination with watching things grow and change, although I usually like to partake in vast retrospect wherein I don't have to put up with the tedious waiting process inbetween evolutions. Tracking etymology, uncovering the routes of ideas and concepts, discovering the stories that are told and retold time after time, all of this is exactly the sort of thing I gravitate towards, perhaps in comfort of the fact that creativity is as much about observation as it is about reiteration and reinvention. How that relates to gaming should be fairly obvious, we get to see the shifting tides of fads that turn into gimmicks that turn into mainstays, weekend hobbyists that become amateurs that become career developers, and rough betas that become indie smash hits that go on to amass sequels that get playtime during major industry events. Can we just put our hands together for 'The Forest' for a second?

I remember exactly what the industry was like when 'The Forest' first launched, just as I remember my attitude towards it. Every other indie game and their mother was another thrice-damned survival game with crafting systems that had you picking up low-poly sticks for hours, hunger and thirst systems which were so needy that they quickly overpowered the entire gameplay loop and became the only thing you could feasibly chase, and that same stiff first person perspective which made all of these island survival scenarios, no matter their outward graphical prowess, just meld into one moss-covered amalgamation. Things became so homogenised that people had to retreat to basic childhood fascinations in order to differentiate themselves. How about a survival game, but zombies? (Oh wait, a bunch of them did that.) How about a survival game, but dinosaurs? (ARK sure did make some pretty pennies off of that sales pitch.) And how about a survival game but body horror? Which is where The Forest comes into the picture.

Compared to it's contemporaries, The Forest was always a few inches above the rest of the games around it, but jank and clumsiness still characterised it as much as it did any other survival game or heck, any indie title at all. It's biggest boon was the multiplayer once that came out, because it soon became a draw for video content creators who were ever hungry for games to mess around with their friends in, and if you can score the 'Youtube viral' award, you're game is almost destined to shoot for the stars. But I think even more than that, the team's greatest benefit towards their game has been stubbornness birthing longevity, because so many other survival titles, some of which looked just as good as this one (and at least a couple ran smoother), ended up falling to the wayside as the various development teams used those games as stepping stones to whatever they wanted to do next. But then the team behind The Forest weren't some script kiddies working out of a basement either, some of the developers in Endnight games had careers working in visual effects for actual movies, so they knew how to actually stick to something in order to get the end that they wanted.

Aside from being gross, The Forest is about being stranded on your prototypical tropical island and slowly discovering the horrible monster-people that occupy the land with you. Now there's a certain approach to the monsters of this game that settles decidedly within traditional body horror, so it doesn't quite appeal to the lengths of monster creativity that I like to sing about, but the 'multiple limbs stuck onto a torso' bit is still decently effective for shock factor the first few times you see it. (the trailers for the new game hardly made me wince, honestly) What stands out to me a lot about the game, however, is the utterly bizarre AI packages these monsters run on, wherein most of the time above ground you'll find these people acting utterly erratically and without purpose. Attached to any other sort of model and this would probably come off as poor AI design, but matched with these misbegotten mistakes of creation and it evolves into this symphony of disturbing wrongness that works wonders to sell the weirdness of this world the team made.

Which is not to say that game was without it's flaws. Not at all. Jank was this game's faithful companion from birth to maturity and I think it's pretty clear that the overall narrative is heavily bookended to the last hour of the game, either because the team didn't know how to stretch out the sci-fi elements and mix them with the gross-out horror or because that storyline just didn't exist when they started making this project. (I suspect the latter) All of which means that the prospect of seeing these same developers take the lessons they learned, in design and narrative, and moving onto a sequel is actually quiet attractive to the ear, which is probably why 'Sons of the Forest' always gets a rise out of me whenever I see a new trailer.

Sons of the Forest looks to pick up right from the last thread of that narrative which The Forest decided it had in those closing moments, following the journey of >spoilers, I guess< the lost son from the first game returning to another island of madness in search of some answers for the illness he is now inflicted with. Although that appears to be the set-up, this latest trailer does make it look like there might be some character creation, or at least selection, up for grabs in this game as the co-op players shown here weren't carbon copies of one another like they all invariably were back in the main Forest game. Yes, in the original you could play as a group of the exact same single parent looking for the one missing son you all share. (That's got to be progressive in some way, right?)

With a release date now set in stone, we can finally take a look at the things we've been seeing in trailers and assume they're no longer rough mock-ups. No, this is probably what the final game is going to be looking like, seams and all, and I have to say: I'm impressed right now. Gone is the indie jankiness and now there's a level of professional spick and sparkle across the whole process, there's still prominent non-collision moments in animations right now but even the best of the best in the industry can't nail perfect collision all of the time, so I can forgive that. It's looks functional so far, which is to say I can see a solid game potentially rising from these foundations. Especially now that we seem to have iron sights to go along with the expanded gunplay, good-lord I don't know why any modern game who can help it so much as considers forgoing ironsights, but for this instance at least I don't need to worry.

There's a lot of little touches that look impressive under the light of a trailer at the very least, such as the way that the AI appears to react more to the actions of the player, and even some life simulation going on, but I'm never one to believe stuff like that until I see it in the game.  All in all, I'm getting the sense that this sequel may just be that step above the last entry that I don't think anyone was really expecting. Perhaps this might actually be an honest to goodness great survival game at the end of the day, and wouldn't that be something? From The Forest to real indie heavy hitter, that's a journey of success worthy of a Lifetime dramatization TV movie if I've ever heard it. So let this blog serve as a reminder, mostly to me, that I'm keeping an eye on this little game and want to see what comes of it. Not a survival fan myself, but I'm always happy to made a convert.

 

Sons of the Forest

Carry on, my wayward son.

There are a certain breed of games out there that earn their popularity not on the battlefield of reviewers and public discourse, but in their ability to attract that most free of advertisers; Streamers. Titles that cultivate scores of viewers through streaming sites such as YouTube and Twitch are often lucky in that their imminent success is then written in the stars. Whereas usually such affection is incredibly hard-won in today's varied assortment of genres and titles, 'Youtube Darlings' are the titles that get to skip that drama and poise themselves for the top. A few years back this phenomenon was known as 'The Pewdiepie effect', for reasons that should be fairly obvious, and it is a philosophy that still holds true as evidenced by the recent surge of love towards 'Untitled Goose game'.

'The Forest' is not a title that, by traditional definition, was worthy of the praise and attention of millions. It lacked in a unique concept, stable gameplay, tight controls and attractive graphics. In fact 'The Forest' was, by-and-large, another forgettable survival title that should have vanished into the ether along with all the others. But for whatever reason, that's not what happened and various Internet personalities, including Pewdiepie, latched onto this shell-of-a-game and turned it into a popular success. I guess one could say that 'Endnight games' won the proverbial lottery, and now that inexplicable success is starting to pay off with an impending sequel; 'Sons of the Forest'.

The original 'Forest' was a simple enough game to understand. You played a potato man with his potato son aboard a plane enroute to somewhere; Cue the 'LOST' contrivance and your plane ends up falling out the sky and crashing into a mysterious island in the middle of nowhere. (A very forested Island, hence he title.) Once there, players are expected to undergo the typical routine of a 'survival experience game'; they must build shelter, secure food and water, and craft themselves rudimentary tools in order to survive the wilderness. The twist came in the fact that players were not steeling themselves to fight against wild animals (I honestly can't remember if the original game even had wild animals in it.) but rather to battle against the throes of naked 'natives'(?) that lived on the island and would throw their forces against you night after night. As development of the title went on, players were encouraged to delve deeper into the island's caves in search of their potato son, and doing so would reveal Human limb monstrosities that made this story verge on the supernatural at times.

As a resident early access title, The Forest, was the kind of game that was notoriously rough at launch and continued to be for several years into it's life cycle. The game looked and played like an unfinished mess for so long that it eventually became part of it's identity and people didn't bat an eye when a series of fixes would utterly fail to fix anything in a meaningful manner, that was just the way that 'The Forest' worked. After all of those years in the workshop, I suppose the title must have achieved some level of polish, (the title doesn't crash with depressing regularity anymore) but it still isn't anything pretty to look at and if you told me that this game would ever be finished, let alone warrant the development of a sequel, I would likely laugh in your face. Funny how things turn out.

Sons of the Forest seems to want to replay the success of the original by going over the same general story beats, leaning into the 'horror' angle that they developed in the later stages of the first title, and play up the 'eroticism' angle that I honestly thought was an accident the first time around. (I mean. I known that everyone was naked, but I thought that was more of a practicality thing.) We start off by seeing our new protagonist, a wannabe Booker Dewitt soldier with the tattoo "Fight Demons" on his wrist. (A little on-the-nose there, guys) Predictably, his military transport is bought down by something that bears a passing resemblance to GOW's Nemacysts, and you wind up on the 'LOST' island once again.

The most talked-about moment in this trailer, however, follows next after the horror elements start to creep in. You see one of your squad dragged off into the woods and then come across a pale form of what appears to be a ghost woman. Ghosty, as I have called her, then starts literally humping some nearby rocks in what I'm going to straight up call one of the most uncomfortable moments in the Game Awards; then her limbs start splitting into duplicates and everyone immediately breathed a sigh of relief that this trailer is venturing into body horror instead of descending into a supernatural Porno. (I'm all for games taking more 'adult' themes but there has to be a line in the sand somewhere.)

One of the biggest changes we see in this trailer, in comparison to the original title, is the way in which your character appears to be a trained special forces soldier. This hasn't changed the baseline of equipment you are saddled with (We still see the player character equipped with the weirdly iconic tactical axe) but it should have an effect on the type of items you interact with. We've already seen a decent amount of ballistic weaponry being tossed about and it should be interesting to see how it all comes into play. It should also be noted that this trailer, assuming it's in engine, displays an incredible step-up in fidelity, perhaps showing that all of 'Endnight's profits are being allocated appropriately.

Given the lack of high quality horror titles that are out there today, I'm marginally more inclined to appreciate this product given it's recent redirection. Although I'd be lying if the 'survival game' routes of the franchise doesn't leave me with lingering trepidation. I haven't really given this studio a chance in the past, their choices haven't quite gelled with my own opinions on what makes a 'good title', but I generally do enjoy to see a budding Indie studio inject their own unique perspective on ostensibly tiered genres, so I'm willing to give this title the benefit of the doubt. Whether the final product can live up to the trailer, however, is the real test today.