Where Escape From Tarkov’s battle-hardened veterans will actively look for a fight, I fl inch at even the most distant sounding gunshots, scurrying from bush to bush and outright avoiding the most well-trafficked areas unless I absolutely have no choice. Given the choice of learning the backstory behind yet another war between the forces of light and darkness, or figuring out the correct wife-tobuzzard-beak exchange rate, I know where I want to spend my time. So while I am struggling to get to grips with it, I’m also intrigued. Shooting zombies, chopping up orcs… repetition has made the fantastical bland.
For a medium so steeped in sci-fi and fantasy, and where the impossible takes no more effort to represent than the real, it’s disappointing to me how much time we spend stuck with tired old tropes. To my mind, videogames are in dire need of more strangeness.
But at the same time, such a commitment to its weird world is refreshing. AGE APPROPRIATE What’s the least embarrassing way to disperse a fl ock of magical birds that keep whispering in your shaman’s ear? Is a polished buzzard beak an appropriate bride-price? How many cows is a fair exchange for the spirit of a sabre-toothed tiger? Fair questions. Far from being familiar moral decisions, they frequently revolve around the clan’s very specific customs and traditions, and how they apply to often bizarre situations. Events are triggered as I play, in which something happens and I’m invited to make a choice about it. I scrape together crumbs of lore as I go – gods are very real, their power can be invoked by physically reenacting old myths, but most of them are asleep I think? And my clan’s patron deity is the god of a specific species of beetle used to make red clothing dye?Īs I get into the game proper, it becomes clear that more than being a challenge of farming, building, and the rest, it’s an ongoing test of how well I can understand and work within a culture totally unlike my own. These choices are largely baffl ing, steeped heavily in the game’s unique setting.
But almost immediately, it reveals itself to be much stranger than that implies.īefore you even begin, you have to choose an origin story for your clan, picking from multiple options at different points in their history. Superficially, it’s a game about managing a settlement in a fantasy land, making sure all of your citizens are safe, warm and well-fed. From the very first moments, this largely text-based game puts me on the back foot.
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