I still haven't finished the game but The more I play it, the more fascinating it becomes, and if you're someone who enjoys reading, I definitely recommend it.
this is me writing this just before sleeping so please bear me.
From the beginning of the game until now, I think game carries this sense of boringness within it (which, in some ways, I don't necessarily see as a negative). Sometimes it's intentional, sometimes it isn't, but either way, it's beautiful and ok.
this work of art does it's job so clean, so many other writers can't reach this level of subtlety and depth and maturity in their literature.
The plot is simple.
A delivery man has one final job to complete, but he can't find the route he needs to take.
But the delivery itself is almost worthless. It won't be where your attention stays.
(Even introducing the work like this could be considered a spoiler, so from this point onward, there are major introductory spoilers.)
Your focus shifts toward identity, capitalism, art, economics, communities, the forgotten, and everything that, in one way or another, circles back to that very delivery and the road leading to it.
The path it reveals from an individual to a system, and then to an entire country is far beyond what we first encounter on the surface, even if we still aren't capable of standing against it.
Because we can't say and point to the true antagonist, villain isn't a person or even a corporation, but rather a system, a system that is something closer to cosmic horror... how exactly are you supposed to stand against it? it simply absorbs you.
so far it's fascinating even if I'm struggling through parts of it myself?! the writing is captivating and it's in a way that there are moments where you might even lose you grasp on what's rea or true! it's parallel story telling? it's past? it's future? am I shaping the reality, the past and the memories? yet it never becomes so surreal that it's symbols and ideas stop serving their purpose.
maybe there's an illusion of choice on the game but perhaps the issue exist beyond the player control, agency or urgency even?!
your choices don't necessarily change the story or the cycle, but they change the emotions and identity of yourself behind the narrative.
through the text you reshape characters, reality or the past.
inside a collective memory?, experience? or subconscious and shared identity.
it's a mechanic?! that I've either never experienced it before or have only rarely seen achieve it's purpose this effectively in storytelling and make this kind of incredibly strange feeling that Is very hard to describe.
MAYBE choice doesn't actually matter, because you can't change a system simply by picking a better dialogue option and being a better person? but perhaps you can learn to observe it differently.
Artistically, the game has been excellent so far. It also feels like, whatever goal the developers had, they managed to achieve it technically as well.
From the camera work to the lighting, from the sound design to the silence that slowly becomes music; from environments whose ambience breathes life into the world, to the soundtrack that carries the story forward it doesn't just become important, it becomes almost sacred because of how perfectly and naturally it's used.
The art style may be simple, with minimalist, flat-looking visuals, but the way it uses negative space, lighting, environments, and composition creates imagery that never feels like it needs more animation, more polygons, or anything beyond what it already is.
It's not a game interested in your agency or your sense of urgency. You simply have to move at its pace. And if you're expecting another Disco Elysium, you'll almost certainly be disappointed. Go into it with absolutely no expectations.
I've been listening to one of its tracks for years now. The atmosphere is incredible. It's one of the few works whose surreal, almost magical realism is handled with remarkable subtlety. Politically, it's mature, and it gives genuinely fascinating meanings to so many different ideas.
Even some of its weaknesses(I don't count them as one) might become strengths depending on your taste.
For example?
Its abstract storytelling gives you no character whose job is to explain this alienated world to you. You have to piece everything together yourself, bit by bit. At first, everything is vague and beyond that, even confusing Or the fact that it leaves so many questions unanswered(at least by now). that's not something that would bother me, and I actually like it when done right.
Even now, there are still plenty of things I've marked with question marks for myself because I simply don't understand them, or because I'm still trying to figure out exactly what this work has accomplished.
But at this point, I don't even think the important question is what this game has achieved for the medium or in general.
(Though maybe it challenges even those ideas to some extent. Maybe it questions our interpretation of life, the value we assign to things, our obsession with speed, and the way we slowly lose parts of ourselves beneath the pressure of systems, challenges, and the values we construct for ourselves.)
The point isn't just telling a conventional or traditional story.
It's about making better use of literature. It's about exploring places, people, and forgotten ordinary lives in a poetic way lives whose colors have faded for many people, where existence has been reduced to a tourist's image of the world, as if America were nothing but Hollywood instead of everything else it contains.
anyway, GOOD STUFF and I fixed my grammer with slop-tool so I hope that I don't miscommunicate myself.
