Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Walking simulators aka "Notgame" Thread

Crooked Bee

(no longer) a wide-wandering bee
Patron
Joined
Jan 27, 2010
Messages
15,048
Location
In quarantine
Codex 2013 Codex 2014 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire MCA Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
Gone there, explored that, listened to a specific bit of the story, stuff like that I assume. They may also be an alternate ending, I don't remember exactly.
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,109
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
The Guardian likes walking sims: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/sep/20/how-walking-sim-first-person-shooter-dear-esther

How walking sims became as important as the first-person shooter
Games like Dear Esther take the environmental lessons of shooters and divert the focus from action to introversion

Stripped of traditional ludic elements, walking sims like Dear Esther give the player room to really investigate the feel of every location. Photograph: Chinese Room

There are no puzzles, no enemies. You’re alone on a remote Hebridean island with little evidence of life beyond the cawing gulls, and the odd glimpse of a shadowy figure on the horizon. There is one path to follow, which guides you over the dunes and into caves lit by phosphorescent flora. The story unravels, not through the completion of tasks, but through a pondering, poetic narration, and scattered letters.

Are you playing a game?

That question has haunted Dear Esther, an interactive exploration of love and grief, since its arrival as a modification to the sci-fi shooter Half-Life in 2008. Developed by a small team of researchers at the University of Portsmouth and later released as a standalone game, it treated the player as a tourist rather than a resident. Your agency in this beautifully drawn world is restricted to movement. The story washes over you like a tide rolling pebbles along the beach.

This week, publisher Curve Digital is releasing Dear Esther: Landmark Edition onPlayStation 4 and Xbox One – an enhanced and updated version of the 2012 PC release. It remains a stark and spellbinding experience, which renders its lonely island in scintillating detail. The story of an unnamed narrator trudging through the grass and sand, reading out letters meant for his dead wife, Esther, remains elusive and haunting, the exact time and place of the action obfuscated behind historical yarns and recollections, as though the island is exerting its own autobiography onto the telling. Snippets of the story are provided in a randomised order, so that each playthrough reveals different angles and images. The interactivity is mostly interpretive – the player has to work out exactly how Esther died, and who is responsible, and where really is the narrator now? But even that description is misleading, because there is no compulsion toward interpretation. You can just walk and listen to the beautiful music.


Firewatch looks like a survival sim, but what you’re really grappling with is solutitude Photograph: Campo Santo

Now, of course, we recognise Dear Esther as one of the originators in a new sub-genre of games, often termed walking sims. Subsequent titles such as Gone Home, Firewatch and the Stanley Parable have taken the premise of a minimalist interactive experience, and pushed it in new directions, though the fundaments are often the same: no puzzles, no enemies, just story, sound and movement. Newcomers like The Grave and Niten promise to take things further.

All of these titles could be easy to dismiss as experimental diversions, a cluster of outliers far from the rest of the industry. But that’s not really how it’s turned out. Dear Esther, and titles like it, have introduced all sorts of interesting questions to the game development community. They have made designers think differently about elements like pace, environmental storytelling and meaning.

Richard Lemarchand, lead designer on the first three Uncharted titles, has talked about how The Graveyard, a 2009 game by Belgian studio Tale of Tales influenced the famed “Peaceful Village” scene in the second instalment of Naughty Dog’s blockbusting series. Nathan wanders through a Nepalese town, indulging in amusing but ultimately pointless interactions with the locals, kicking footballs, patting bulls, chatting – just as in The Graveyard, the character simply walks along a cemetery path, taking in the sights and sounds. We have seen the influence of walking sims in modern horror titles such as Soma and Vanishing of Ethan Carter – both emphasising environment and atmosphere over interaction.

538.jpg

The Graveyard, a simple game that inspired the Uncharted series Photograph: Tale of Tales

Stripped of traditional ludic elements, walking sims give the player room to really investigate the feel of every location, to think about the characters, to relate to them on a human level rather than as agents of action. Portland-based developer The Fullbright Company was inundated with messages from players who saw their own lives and struggles reflected in Gone Home, a domestic drama about first love and family breakdown. Firewatch, a game about loneliness and isolation, set in the Wyoming wilderness, got a lot of players thinking about the emotional distance in their own lives.

First-person shooters like Doom and Unreal revolutionised our understanding of space, structure and embodiment in games. They put players into the body of a killing machine and set them lose. First-person walking sims have taken the environmental lessons, the same ideas of architectural structure as a form of storytelling, and diverted the focus from action to introversion. They leave the player alone in a world with their own thoughts.

Playing Dear Esther now it seems crazy that its release was almost provocative. It angered people – people who tossed around definitions of what a game should be; definitions that would always lead to more questions, more exceptions, more problems. We have seen a similar reaction to No Man’s Sky, its soulful, minimalist approach to space exploration at odds with the expectations and ambiguous hype. Weird games still have the power to shock and create fury, which is probably a good thing.

People are always asking questions about the boundaries of art – what qualifies and what doesn’t. This debate has been transposed onto games. What Dear Esther, and all walking sims tell us, is that there are different kinds of challenge and agency in this medium. Depth is not purely systemic. Dear Esther, like its spiritual successor Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, simulates walking through a kind of installation. You have to work with it; you fill in the gaps.

It was a determination to reduce the elements of a first-person shooter to the absolute fundamentals that led to the development of Dear Esther. Since then, the genre has become an important force in its own right. Mainstream game developers play indie games; their teams have similar ideas and wonder about similar questions. It is possible to see the influence of experimental games in the Bioshock series, in the work and philosophy of Ubisoft, even in the Call of Duty series, where the surreal, hallucinogenic memory sequences that have come to typify the Black Ops titles, with the same focus on environmental and audio effect over player input.

The walking sims have given permission for games to slow down, place the emphasis on player interpretation, and tell interesting stories through scenery and props and artefacts without resorting to graffiti. Perhaps we won’t appreciate their full impact until virtual reality goes mainstream; with an input technology that utterly gives itself to the idea of immersion and second-by-second experience, those quiet moments of reflection, those detailed landscapes, those almost theatrical techniques and stories will make complete sense. Perhaps more than any other genre, the walking sim is preparing us for a future of synthetic worlds.
 
Last edited:

Redlands

Arcane
Joined
Mar 23, 2008
Messages
983
The Guardian's a fucking piece of SJW garbage, and this is coming from a gay leftie. It's now just a women's magazine pretending to be a serious newspaper, aiming at the rich yummy mummies and their cucks who want to appear left-wing to assuage the fact they're horrible rich fuckers helping to ruin the world by not caring in the slightest about the concerns of the actual poor. It's one of the main reasons I've become way more misogynistic and racist: they are so bad at arguing their points and are so smug and self-righteous about anything they say, they manage to convince me of the converse of their position, even if it's against my own held beliefs. Conservatives should pick up abortion as a banner issue to help insure some of these fuckers get wiped out for the next generation. The only joy you can get by visiting their website, is by going to the comment section before the moderators swoop in like shrewish harpies, or laughing cruelly as they beg for money as they slowly commit suicide.

Most journalism is too retarded for words, but the Guardian is so odious I wish companies could actually get raped so at least it would get a good dicking.
 

Crooked Bee

(no longer) a wide-wandering bee
Patron
Joined
Jan 27, 2010
Messages
15,048
Location
In quarantine
Codex 2013 Codex 2014 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire MCA Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
I like how the author smuggled a reference to No Man's Sky in there to make its critics feel bad. Had a look at his profile - and sure enough: No Man's Sky is Elite for the 21st century. Pointless? Maybe – but also sublime. :lol:

That being said, the article overhypes notgames and is fundamentally uncritical, but other than that, it's actually okay in terms of telling the broad audience what notgames are trying to do and why they are "a thing" - and how their adherents (but not critics) see some of their function and importance. It's basically true that, as every minimalist/experimental/deconstructionist genre, they are interesting from a design perspective. The problem is that his article reads almost like a manifesto and not a journalistic piece, and it hails notgames as "the future" - which is something I strongly disagree with, because I think the more interesting question is where to go next, after notgames, instead of just worshiping them uncritically.

The author also hasn't done his research fully, because otherwise he'd know/mention that notgame developers were inspired not just by (and 'deconstructed' not just) first person shooters, but also the whole first person exploration / immersive sim genre which has an entire history behind it - which no, notgames did not invent, contra what this article might make the reader think - as well as first person adventure games, which used to be a thing too. Generally, there's a whole spectrum of genres and subgenres between notgames and first-person shooters, which the author ends up (mis)presenting as a simple binary. I could go on, but whatever.

It's also pretentious, of course, but that's okay with me. At least it doesn't use the word "sublime."
 

Unkillable Cat

LEST WE FORGET
Patron
Joined
May 13, 2009
Messages
27,049
Codex 2014 Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy
It's basically true that, as every minimalist/experimental/deconstructionist genre, they are interesting from a design perspective.

I agree with this point, if only to see the devs of these games scramble to try to explain themselves. Still, I tend to briefly glance at these games to see if they're doing anything worthwhile with their non-gaming elements. 9 times out of 10 I'm disappointed, but if I can bring one example of a walking sim doing something neat then it's Firewatch and the camera. If you're going to be walking around a lush, beautiful landscape, then it only makes sense to be allowed to take pictures of it, no? Unfortunately Firewatch doesn't seem to have taken the extra step needed to make this gimmick stand out - to save the camera photos as image files for easy sharing across social media, or just keeping as a memento of your playthrough.
 

tuluse

Arcane
Joined
Jul 20, 2008
Messages
11,400
Serpent in the Staglands Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Shadorwun: Hong Kong
I would also suggest notgames are not the future because they're not new. Walking Simulators are more new*, but as I posted in your thread Crooked Bee there is a long history of notgames going back to at least the early 90s.

*I do wonder though, how old the first Doom WAD with no enemies designed to just be walked around in is.
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,109
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...esther-think-about-the-term-walking-simulator



The people who create genre-defining video games aren't always the same people that go on to decide what that genre should be called. We talked about that on this week's podcast,as we cast our mind back to a time when first-person shooters were known simply as 'Doom clones'. Weird.

But some genre names are kinder than others. Back in 2012, when Dear Esther was first commercially released, it sparked a debate that's still seems somewhat unresolved. Its critics lashed out, claiming that a game with such a limited amount of interaction wasn't really a game at all. No, this was just a 'walking simulator'.

Four years on, we spoke to The Chinese Room about this conversation they unknowingly sparked. With some hindsight, is Dear Esther really a video game? Or is it a walking simulator? And does any of that really bloody matter?

They've probably never had someone ask them these kinds of questions before.
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,109
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth

Released: http://store.steampowered.com/app/520720/



'A deserted island... a lost man... memories of a fatal crash... a book written by a dying explorer.'

Dear Esther immerses you in a stunningly realised world, a remote and desolate island somewhere in the outer Hebrides. As you step forwards, a voice begins to read fragments of a letter: 'Dear Esther...' - and so begins a journey through one of the most original first-person games of recent years.

Abandoning traditional gameplay for a pure story-driven experience, Dear Esther fuses its beautiful environments with a breathtaking soundtrack to tell a powerful story of love, loss, guilt and redemption.

Key features:
  • Every play-through a unique experience, with randomly generated audio, visuals and events.
  • Explore incredible environments that fully immerse you in the haunting island and its mysterious past.
  • A poetic, semi-randomised story like you've never experienced in a game before.
  • Stunning soundtrack composed by Jessica Curry, featuring world-class musicians.
  • An uncompromisingly inventive game delivered to the highest AAA standards.
Dear Esther: Landmark Edition has been remade with the Unity engine, featuring a full audio remaster, and the addition of a brand-new Directors' Commentary mode, allowing players to explore the island and learn what inspired the game and how it was crafted by The Chinese Room and Rob Briscoe.
 

AN4RCHID

Arcane
Joined
Jan 24, 2013
Messages
4,714
Thomas Gripp blog post on the problem with walking simulators - https://frictionalgames.blogspot.se/2017/03/traversal-and-problem-with-walking.html

Traversal and the Problem With Walking Simulators



The Wizard of Oz. Dir. Victor Fleming. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. USA.1939.

This blog post is based on a conversation that I had with Brian Upton at GDC a few weeks back. Most of the basic stuff here comes from the discussion with Brian, then I have added my own ideas on top of them.

Our basic problem was stated as the following: What is the fun of simply going from place to place?

This is a problem that is very unique to games. In a movie we rarely see a character actually going places. Instead we witness the intention of going to another place, possibly see the mode of transportation, and then we are at the destination. Unless narrative-related hardships happen along the way, we never see the character actually traveling. Why? Because it simply is not very interesting.

Games work differently. In games we have to show every single step that the player takes. There are a couple of reasons for this.

The first one, and the most obvious, is that it is very hard to know what the player's intent is. When you enter a car in GTA, the game cannot possibly know where you are supposed to be going. You have to express your will by actually driving your car where you want it to go, every inch of the way. When a game features cuts, like in fast travel systems, it is all based upon the players first expressing their will to go to a certain place.

In games we want the player to take on the role of a certain person. If a game simply decides where the players will go when they enter a car or start walking along, that aspect is violated. There are a few games that do it, e.g Thirty Flights of Loving, but these games are usually short and made in a way where this phenomenon becomes a part of the gaming experience, or they simply contain very little player agency overall (e.g. interactive games like Heavy Rain). In this perspective traversal is more than simply "empty travel time", it is a crucial expression of the player's agency, cementing their role as the protagonist.

The second reason is a bit more subtle. As mentioned, part of what makes games interesting is the expression of will. To achieve this, the player must know what they are able to do within the game's universe. In a movie, a character can reach for an object not seen before, or exclaim "I saw that shop on my way over!" despite the viewers never seeing it. This is not possible in a game. In order for a player to know a game's space, both in spatial terms and in terms of what actions are possible to make, they need to get intimate with it. The player has to go through the boring process of walking about in order to make a mental picture of the surroundings. If they don't, they cannot possibly know what the realm of their possibilities are.

However, this activity is not very interesting at its core. Sure, it is fun to look at fancy environments for a bit, but after a while it gets tiresome. Most games solve this by introducing some sort of activity to the player at this point.



Sonic: Lost World (2013)
In a platformer the player always have some sort of obstacles to get past. For instance, pits to jump across or objects to avoid, During moments of traversal (when the game is not meant to pose a direct challenge) these are not very hard to get past. Still, they do require some attention. So when you are going from A to B and not really accomplishing much, you are still involved in a basic muscle task that relates directly to the game's world. This means that part of your brain is actively engaged in the activity at hand.

Think of how you sometimes can zone out when you do some activity at a certain level of difficulty. For instance; driving, knitting, or just walking rugged terrain in the woods. This is the same thing - you are engaged just enough not to get bored by the traversal.


Metro 2033 (2010)
Another way of doing this is by utilizing our sense of anticipation. This is how stealth, tactical combat and horror games work. When walking towards a door you are not simply engaged in the activity of walking. You are also constantly thinking about what might lie ahead. "I need to make sure to not make too many sounds", "What might attack me from behind that door", "When I get to the door I need to make sure to sweep the room for hostiles", and so forth. So when walking, you are also engaged in the activity of planning ahead. You are still in the game's world.



Virginia (2016)
However, a walking simulator lacks this sort of engagement. Walking forward is just a matter of pressing down a key or stick. And unless you are my dad playing a game, this doesn't pose any sort of challenge at all. Your brain is basically unoccupied and the chance of your mind starting to drift is very high. Instead of being immersed in the game's world you might start thinking of what to cook for dinner or something else that is totally unrelated to the experience the game wants you to have.

I know there are some people who argue that "walking simulator" is not a fair name, but because of this issue I actually think it is quite appropriate. What happens during traversal is quite closely linked to the core of the game. In a 3D platformer your activity during traversal is still about platforming, in a horror game you are on the look out for dangers, and in a walking simulator - well, you are simply walking.

This doesn't pose as a problem to everyone who play walking simulators, and I think the "trick" is to put yourself in a sort of meditative state where you simply block out any intruding thoughts and just focus on the essence of being in the game. One way of achieving this mindset is through stuff like music. It's one of the reasons why The Chinese Room's titles have been so successful. Their amazing music often becomes front and center during these moments of just walking, and by doing so keeps the player in the world.

Still, I think this poses a problem and it is something that anyone making a narrative-heavy game needs to ponder. It's similar to how scenes are constructed in movies. If a scene simply starts and ends on the same note, then it falls flat and gets boring. Just like some walking simulators can get away with just walking, some movies can get away with this for parts of the audience. But that doesn't mean it is the best way to approach the problem. In the same way as film scenes thrive on there being dramatic motion, so should games try to find an interesting activity to tie together all of the traversal.

If you are making a game that uses a classical game mechanic, then this does not pose a huge problem. But it's when you want to go off the beaten path and try something different that, especially when the focus is on storytelling, this becomes crucial. You need to consider: When the player is simply walking around, what keeps their mind in the game's world?

In one of our upcoming super secret games, we want to explore new ways of telling a story through gameplay. This makes the issue of traversal really high on the list of things we need to make work. A key component for us in solving this has been to focus on what sort of fantasy it is that we want our players to partake in. The trick is then to make sure that our players focus on this fantasy at every single moment. We want to make sure that the players are preoccupied with things that relate to this fantasy, and that these actions require their attention.

The way we intend to do this is by packing the environment with narrative- and gameplay-important information. The more of this information the players have, the easier it is for them to create plans for overcoming upcoming obstacles. On top of that, the information changes over time, so players need to keep up this mental exercise even when entering previously visited locations. The crucial bit is to avoid making this procedure too difficult, as it would otherwise be exhausting in the long run. It should lie at the sweet-spot where it becomes barely conscious, coming into full focus only when important, when new information is discovered. On top of this, the information needs to be interesting in itself, not simply dull collectibles or similar. As I mentioned earlier, it is important that this task reinforces the player's fantasy.

I know this sounds a bit fuzzy, but going into greater details would be too spoilerish at this point. It is also worth pointing out that this is still in an early state, and we haven't had time to see how well it works when put in practice.

So, this is by far a solved issue. But by simply recognizing it and gathering modes of attack, it feels like we have taken some nice steps towards a solution.
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
Introversion's walking sim:



Regaining consciousness you smell the damp. Opening your eyes you see the stone walls of the chamber flickering by the light of the fire; you stumble to your feet and kick a helmet clattering across the floor. Slowly the ache in your head begins to subside and you notice the beginnings of a passage. After a few steps the darkness consumes you. Returning to the safely of the fire you see a LIDAR scanner on the floor - a trigger press results in a faint glow coming from inside the helmet. You put the helmet on, adjust the beam-width and proceed into the abyss….

Inspired by Gone Home and Dear Esther, Scanner Sombre is a cave exploration experience. With stunning visuals and a terrifying theme, it is the 6th major video game released by Introversion Software - creators of the million selling, BAFTA award winning Prison Architect as well as Uplink, Darwinia, DEFCON and Multiwinia.
 

Villagkouras

Arcane
Joined
Jul 3, 2014
Messages
1,022
Location
Greece
Lol, What Remains of Edith Finch killed this fucking genre, I don't see why anyone should bother playing another walking sim after this one, as he certainly won't find anything better and more interesting than this.

If you intend to play it, do it in one sitting, it's very short, about 2-3 hours.
 

Zombra

An iron rock in the river of blood and evil
Patron
Joined
Jan 12, 2004
Messages
11,525
Location
Black Goat Woods !@#*%&^
Make the Codex Great Again! RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Dear Esther sounds too noninteractive for me, but I liked Gone Home well enough, especially going in blind and not knowing what to expect. (I wouldn't exactly run around to all my friends saying "You have to play this.") Vanishing of Ethan Carter was better, there was certainly a lot of walking around but it was all in aid of something ... learning your way around and finding points of interest does constitute gameplay, plus there were a fair number of legit puzzles and so forth.

In general, I'm fine with sparse gameplay. Vanishing for example would not have been improved by a Nazi to shoot every 50 feet.
 

RuySan

Augur
Joined
Jul 11, 2005
Messages
777
Location
Portugal
I'm not entirely opposed to the concept of walking simulator as long as it's well written and atmospheric. Dear Esther isn't either (besides, Chinese room are such dumbfucks that accused the witcher 3 of being a misogynistic game).

Anyway, the best walking sim was released long ago and its name is morrowind.
 
Joined
Aug 10, 2012
Messages
5,866
Just played Edith Finch it was pretty garbage, the EC comics spoof was fun though.

It had a lot of attention to detail in the environment, too bad nothing was interactive and the story was ultimately a pile of shit with all buildup and no payoff. I guess that's par for the course with these 2deep4u hacks.

I guess they do call it 'a story by' and not 'a game by'
 

iZerw

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
Apr 18, 2012
Messages
895
Location
Russia
Just recently played though a bunch of these walking simulators: Vanishing of Ethan Karter, Leviathan, Dear Esther, What Remains of Edith Finch, Stanley Parable and Beginner's Guide. And What Remains of Edith Finch is the best in the "genre", nothing comes any close. Dear Esther is abysmal pretentious piece of crap. Everything else is somewhere between these two.
 
Joined
Aug 10, 2012
Messages
5,866
It tries to experiment with a few narrative ideas that are a little outside the box (like the EC comics sequence that I mentioned before, that was very cool, and the canning factory sequence that was less cool but still pretty creative).

Unfortunately the script fumbles a lot at the end and it feels very underdeveloped, like they ran out of money and had to release the thing (which is very possible) or possibly just weren't skilled enough to wrap up a story that had interesting hooks.

In 'products' like these developers really have to try and think up some gimmicky shit that no one's done before, unfortunately - they can't rely on the strength of the gameplay because well, there isn't any.
 

Wirdschowerdn

Ph.D. in World Saving
Patron
Joined
Nov 30, 2003
Messages
34,403
Location
Clogging the Multiverse with a Crowbar
Review: Tacoma
2017-08-01 02:01:00· 4 minute read · Ray Porreca@rayporreca

There's a certain stillness to space station Tacoma. Though it orbits through space and its compartments rotate in steady automation, the station is terribly quiet. It once buzzed with life. The signs of Tacoma's former inhabitants are inescapable. But those people are gone now, leaving behind only remnants of their time in orbit and some unanswered questions about their disappearances.

Tacoma begins with a simple mission: board the abandoned station and recover any and all data relating to the crew's final hours. It's ostensibly a game about traveling through lonely corridors and unoccupied rooms; the real Tacoma exists within the data interfaces and personal logs of the six crew members that once called the sleek station home.

tacoma3-noscale.jpg


Tacoma (PC [reviewed], Xbox One)
Developer: Fullbright
Publisher: Fullbright
Released: August 2, 2017
MSRP: $19.99


Let's get something out of the way first. Tacoma only takes a few hours to finish. It's not a long game, even if you're intent on leaving no part of the station unturned. But Tacoma's runtime is anything but a shortcoming. It's a powerful tool. From the moment protagonist Amy Ferrier enters the station's silent halls, Tacoma commands attention. In two hours, developer Fullbright manages to tell a story that's both gripping and emotional without wasting a single extra minute.

Tacoma weaves sleek science-fiction visuals with augmented reality displays and glitchy artifacts. Once Ferrier steps aboard, she utilizes AR technology to track -- and essentially relive -- moments from each crew member's time in space. What begins as a mission to recover data for the sake of the Tacoma's owners quickly becomes something more; Tacoma allows players to observe and inhabit the lives of six people stuck countless miles away from their homes.

The station's crew are digital ghosts. They haunt Amy whenever she enters specific rooms. A blip on her heads-up display will appear whenever trace AR footage is recoverable, which allows players to watch the missing astronauts flicker into existence once more. Their forms are cast in single colors and simple shapes, nearly translucent against the station's interior. At any point during an AR sequence, Amy can pause, rewind, or fast forward the footage, which both adds to the game's ethereal atmosphere and allows players a chance to follow each scene from multiple perspectives. Tacoma's flashbacks aren't static shots. Each one is full of movement. Characters enter from one room only to converse, walk and wander out of sight. It's impossible to catch every line of dialogue in one viewing, which means that dedicated players will have to pause the playback and reposition themselves to find characters who vanish from sight. Like ghosts, Tacoma's virtual displays care not for the living's inability to pass through solid objects.

You can piece together what happened during the Tacoma crew's final days by watching the main AR sequences without much difficulty. But while the story-mandated segments move the plot forward, some extra sleuthing is what truly brings the characters to life. The station is full of personal objects and internal memos for careful inspection. They're hardly -- if ever -- required for progress, glossing over them means missing out on what makes Tacoma so special: its overwhelming ability to make its characters feel human. Every member of the crew has flaws and hang-ups. They might be gone by the time Amy docks her vessel and enters the station, but they leave half-scrawled notes to lovers and emails to far-away family members in their wake. It's not uncommon to paint a picture of one of the crew through how they act during an AR sequence only to later find some snippet of their personal lives that completely changes your perception of them a few minutes later. Tacoma's cast is diverse; a collection of strangers from across the globe from wildly different backgrounds, and through some impeccably detailed environmental design, every one of them feels well-realized.

Tacoma_Hub-noscale.jpg


The same too can be said for the random objects that litter the station. Tacoma features some of the most obsessively-detailed pieces of trash ever seen in a game. Snack wrappers, cigarette tubes, and countless other objects are scattered in every nook and cranny imaginable. Amy can pick up and rotate every single one. It might not seem necessary in the grand scheme of things, but the little details packed into the space station are touches of the sublime. Every mug -- and the ringed stain it leaves behind -- tells a smaller piece of Tacoma's story.

Tacoma isn't for everyone. Though short, it's meditative and methodical. It's a game for the quiet explorer and the empathetic. There's no major action or combat, no perplexing puzzles or fail states. Instead, Tacoma gives players a masterfully crafted setting and encourages them to find out what made the people who once called it home tick. Life, even among the stars, can be mundane and familiar but Tacoma's presentation is nothing short of spectacular.

[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]


Tacoma reviewed by Ray Porreca

9
SUPERB

Always kept an eye on this space-fag bouncing sim, but now I'm relieved it's actually turning out to be good.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom