BEAUTIFUL DESOLATION

just finished the game, great story with interesting unique characters , each and every one of them, the dialouge portraits remind me of those retro models from Fallout 1 and 2 and startcraft , trippy ending too XD

A singular strait of refined cultural expression, Beautiful Desolation wends it's way, in its own eerie fashion, into a land of strange enchantment. An ineffable quality not merely sourced from a wonderland of impressionistic worldbuilding, a phenomenal soundtrack, or the strange cast of otherworldly souls, but largely from the nature of its unvarnished representation of South African culture; down to the unique wounds of the Border War conflict and the lingering pains of Apartheid. Gaming is by and large primarily concerned with aesthetics mined from America culture, a handful of European countries, and Japan - most games straying beyond the narrow confines of that orthodoxy are nonetheless sourced from them. Games about those cultures, not of them. A tiresome homogeny that has languished in its own stagnant, overly content arrangements of fiction - for those who crave unique, compelling experiences more than the cynical extraction of "fun," it is consistently discouraging to see the medium corrupted by the lust for endorphins. Consumers engage with videogames like digital teats extruding liquid Prozac, suckling on them like desperate melancholics. That crap is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ depressing. Pure escapism, the pursuit of some kind of cowardly balm because you "just want to relax after work," wasting your only leisure time on digital zombification is alien to me. I legitimately cannot see the appeal of it, that cloying obsession with familiarity. It's like giving up, on your hobbies, on the very idea of curiosity. Luckily, gaming's roosts found purchase elsewhere, smaller studios hatching out of previously neglected cultural branches. Beautiful Desolation is Afrikaner, purely. A game rendered unlike anything else, due to its commitment to South Africa, a nation whose representation is typically limited to awkward Afrikaans VO slapped over mercenaries in Farcry 2 or Metal Gear Solid 5, divorced from their true context. Small nuances, slang, culture, our unique brand of racial tensions, and the pain of the Border War conflict are depicted here in a lens of cultural specificity, and chronological specificity. For people of a certain time, born of men who bore certain scars, like my father who came back from a war that would never let him truly leave it. There are very few opportunities for me to feel kinship like this with a game - is there even another like it? Given to those who grew up with the vast beauty of South Africa? It only helps that its inspirations hew close to my own most nostalgic experiences. Fallout, Sanitarium, and hearing about a guy inventing a flamethrowing anti-car jacking device as a boy growing up in the Western Cape. Slow, methodical, a great emphasis on narrative, atmosphere, and an astonishingly adroit sense of worldbuilding, Beautiful Desolation is a strange dream out of my Afrikaner boyhood, watching, fascinated, over the shoulder of my brother as I gazed into a murky CRT depicting a warrior listening to a dying man, pleading for vengeance, at the door of a monastery wreathed in red light - and then, half an hour later, the goosebump inducing intonation of "Ahhh, fresh meat." There are feelings, sensations that only this medium can deliver, but those transcendental experiences often demand eschewing design tenets fixated on the idea of creating a thing meant to be consumed, for people to grow fat and placid. Pleasure with little to no reason or context, senseless. It is a far greater achievement to create something of conceptual purity, married to ambience and the exploration of the familiar through the depiction of the unfamiliar, than the simple act of contriving a drug built out of binary and human compulsion. Some may dislike its slow wanderings, its gameplay centered around conversation, listening, and soaking in a sense of place, and its refusal to abandon that gentle, oneiric stride, but that is where beauty lies in gaming, being able to stand still in a moving world of dreams - what other medium allows you to do the same?

All I can say about this game is "different"! A different CRPG. Playable but you must be a little patient...

A fascinating world and story to explore. Utterly gorgeous art work and a very unique experience. You can tell this was a work of love. Nice one devs. Recommended

Смотрели 9й район Режиссера: Нила Бломкампа - так это по моему есть все в игре по своему! играя в эту игру я ощутил некое дежавю с фильмом

[u]Beautiful Desolation[/u] clearly shares DNA with the developer’s earlier games, but the larger, more open world makes puzzles feel more obscure and some critical items had no clear clue to their location. At times the game becomes a fetch quest across a very large map. The art, voices, and characters are excellent, but spread thinly. I enjoyed it, though the [u]Stasis[/u] games remain much stronger.

If i install the game on a desktop computer i can see all the languages, but if i install it on a steam deck i can't unfortunately. Why can't i see all the languages? Developers? Is it not the same game that is installed on the deck or what could be causing this? There are a total of 7-8 languages ​​to choose from on deck. Thx.