Things I’ve Consumed in 2023

I want to try and make this one quick primarily because I still have things to consume and things to continue writing. I’m no where near done with Elden Ring and the closer I get to the end of the game the more I start consuming the loosely connected media to the game from all the various YouTube channels I follow, slowing me down further. I also want to write this because I’ve got two pieces I’ve been working on for a long time now and I’m still no where near done with them in the long run so I’d rather put out something quick and easy.

Qualifications for the List:

• Something I liked that I think is worth mentioning
• Something I didn’t like that I think is worth mentioning.
• Something I definitely finished consuming.
• Something I definitely didn’t finish consuming, because who cares?
• I consumed it in 2023.
• I also won’t talk about it if I wrote about it this year (with an exception I’ll get to). So if you want my opinions on albums released in January — May, Jedi: Survivor, BT’s new album, and Spencer Brown’s new album, you won’t find them here.

Movies/TV/YouTube

The Witcher — Season 3

During Christmas season this past year I fell ill and binged The Witcher: Blood Omen. Don’t watch it, it’s terrible. But upon watching it, realizing I wasn’t going to get much Witcher content until summer when The Witcher season 3 was going to release, I decided to bite the bullet and thoroughly watch Joseph Anderson’s two Witcher reviews to try and fully comprehend those games and their stories. Then I spent the first half of this year reading The Last Wish and Sword of Destiny (consider this a double-book-review insert). I really enjoyed the first two Witcher books and maybe the best thing about reading them was re-contextualizing my opinion on the TV show. Everyone was constantly trash-talking the show as something “only good because Henry Cavill was there demanding certain things”. But reading the books has only shattered the illusion. Changes made across those first two books to slot into the first two seasons of The Witcher have pretty fair reasons for their re-writes. It’s about smooshing stories together simultaneous to the canon of Geralt raising Ciri to save for time. If we followed the books there’d be two entire seasons of stories before Ciri was even in the picture. The writers took advantage of the fantastic episodic nature in the first two books to work as interstitial themes for the TV show’s overarching plot about the man killing monsters who finds it his fate to raise someone who thinks herself maybe a little monstrous in this great big world. It works pretty well but maybe I’ll change my mind after I read the main series of books (I’ve finally started Blood of Elves).

Also, watching the world have a fit over Henry Cavill departing from the series now feels different. Yes, I think he played a fantastic Geralt if you enjoyed the video game(s). The author thinks he played a fantastic Geralt too. There’s some sidebar allegations that seemed to not be pushed more that Henry was kind of a jerk to women on set but that didn’t have the sort of “public response” that we see when allegations go supported by the rest of Hollywood. Regardless it’s pretty rare for Netflix to keep a show running well for too long so for many this thing with Henry leaving looked like an easy way for people to call it quits on the show. Personally, after reading those first books I was way more impressed with Joey Batey’s performance as Dandelion/Jaskier, he felt so much closer to the dialogue of the character on the page than even Henry as Geralt. Lastly, I feel like most people looked at Cavill’s departure from the series as a way to color their opinion of season 3. Where most seemed ready to be done with the show because “what’s the point? He’s gone!”, for me season 3 felt like a fantastic exploration of all the pieces on the board finally moving in the way late-game Witcher 3 feels exciting. With Geralt, Yennefer, and Ciri now a trio of heroes working together across the season we have a gripping series of events while they play chess with multiple kingdoms, societies, and personal arcs. It has its shortcomings but honestly every season has so far. Season 1 had a timeline problem. Season 2 had a climax-abrupt-ending problem. And season 3 has some production woes that made the visual work at the start of the season…a problem. But so much of the budget and work started showing up immediately after that first episode or two. The siege at the end of the season is a massive set piece they clearly spent a lot of time on. I enjoyed it, I’m curious to see how they manage changing Geralt in the next season but more important to me is the return of Joey Batey in season 4. And now I need to move on to the next thing because there’s no time.

PsychOdyssey

Oh my gosh just go watch it. If you like video games you owe it to yourself to watch this masterpiece of a video game documentary. It hits harder as a longtime fan of Double Fine and a backer of Broken Age who watched that game unfold in its own documentary. This is, in many ways, a sequel to the Double Fine Adventure, exploring the uglier side of a game’s development. But you don’t have to watch that to comprehend this at all. Words won’t do this documentary justice. Just watch it. There’s even fantastic coverage of the documentary you can go watch on MinnMax’s YouTube channel where he gets to interview the filmmakers about exactly how honest this production was. Do it. Watch it. I could go on and on about it but just a few episodes in and the documentary will speak for itself.

An odd YouTube recommendation

I honestly can’t believe I’m recommending this one but if, for some reason, you enjoy “ghost hunter TV” then I’d recommend you go check out Project Fear on YouTube. The series is a new addition to the YouTube space after the main crew behind it suffered a TV-show cancellation likely at the hands of everyone’s latest villain to creativity: David Zaslav. You can also check out their TV show “Destination Fear” over on Max to get a good idea of some of the stuff they’ve captured on camera before to understand these people have been doing this for a while. Project Fear is four close friends (two of them are siblings even) taking a road trip to multiple haunted locations across the span of a week or so. The hook is that on the road trip, each of the four cast members get to pick a location that the others don’t know about (yet) and determine the rules for the location. One crew member may pick on another and force a person to be the first to explore the location alone. Another crew member may put up a fan vote without context and then a cast member has to stay cuffed to a door for half the night. A recent hot trend is pushing for spending the night without flashlights involved, just night vision. After initial explorations, the show takes its self-inflicted twist when the crew writes down the four scariest spots in a haunted location on paper, puts the places in a hat, and then each crew members draws their fate. From that point on until sunrise, each person has to go to their location and stay there alone. The isolation and lack of light in these places that often saw a bunch of human suffering creates added fear and an interesting time. What really drew me to Project Fear over other ghost hunter shows (though before this summer I had never really watched a single show before) was how, especially after shedding their TV network, these people really seem to get along well when they’re not putting each other through utterly terrifying experiences sometimes tapped into their own major fears. It’s like watching four siblings bicker, get on each other’s nerves, and take care of each other through crazy spooky explorations. It’s fun as far as ghost hunting shows go and you’re helping a small team find their bearings again after getting fired, something all too common these days in creative spaces. They’ve done three full road trips already and are working on getting the third one published (it’s in the edit phase for now). Check it out if you’re interested. I don’t blame you if you’re not a fan of these things though.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

This is one of the two large pieces I’m currently working on so I won’t say too much here. Across the Spider-Verse was the movie I was waiting for over the past two years. It’s one of the most visually stunning things I’ll ever see in theaters. It’s a Russian nesting doll of a movie about Miles Morales from Dimension A struggling to balance his identities as a son and as a Spider-Man who misses his friends nestled inside a movie about Gwen Stacy from Dimension B struggling with her identities and the repercussions of opening up to her family about her identity and how she lets that inform her worldview nestled inside a movie about Spider-People from Dimensions C through Infinity and the larger threat the multiverse faces nestled inside a movie about superhero narratives, the way in which we engage with them, and decide what’s acceptable and not in our wider culture as people who enjoy stories in the dimension we call “reality”. I can’t contain my emotions when I watch this movie. Over 100 people quit while making this movie and it’s a big shame. In a time where more and more people, oftentimes creatives, are realizing the fact that they shouldn’t have to live so terribly to make their art that the world profits on, I really hope the creatives behind this film get to do the same so that Beyond the Spider-Verse can be just as incredible AND be made under better conditions.

Books

I technically read more books last year when I went on an absolutely unstoppable comic book frenzy from summer onwards after getting out of a terrible working situation. But here’s some rapid fire reads and recommendations.

Fables by Bill Willingham and Mark Buckingham
I finished reading the Fables series this year. I liked it. But the author seems to be a bit of a weirdo jerk with some odd values that sometimes insert themselves into the narrative. However some of the darkest and exciting storytelling for Fables hides in its later books. After enough time has passed since finishing the series, the cream of the crop is definitely Cubs in Toyland, a story of its own while the main story is gearing up for the grand finale that takes turns that utterly churn the stomach and break the heart. It’s incredible and worth the 17 books of building before it (okay 16, The Great Fables Crossover is half bad because Jack is in it and a central character).

Slave Religion by Albert J. Raboteau
A dense historical / anthropological work that explores how key religion was to the numerous slave populations across the United States and even outwards to include other chunks of the western hemisphere across its hundreds of years as an institution. I’d only really recommend it if you’re a dedicated reader of historical texts and critical essays about topics like slavery and religion. The hook that drew me towards it was when my best friend discussed how the text demonstrated how important religion was to slaves and even survived the journey to the West. In an age where religion in my country is oftentimes associated with conservatism, and thereby oftentimes associated with systemic racism, Slave Religion is both encouraging and discouraging. If you want an easier (but still not necessarily easy) read of the same subject I’d recommend…

White Too Long by Robert P. Jones
I’m not done with this one yet but I’m about half way there. This one is an easier read but not necessarily less dense or easy if you’re white and/or a Christian. It is an utter evisceration, by a Christian, of Christianity’s utter complicity and even involvement with white supremacy for the past four hundred years. Reading just the intro of this book floored me and I couldn’t return to it out of difficulty grappling with the horror stories inside it. But the utter rigor with which Jones is holding his own religion accountable for in this book is admirable, even going so far as to state:

“Until we find the courage to face these appalling errors of our recent past, white Christians should probably avoid any further proclamations about what ‘the Bible teaches’ or what ‘the biblical worldview’ demands.” — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long

If you’re a white Christian in America, this one feels essential.

Gotham Central, Book Two: Jokers and Madmen by Ed Brubaker & Greg Rucka
Batman fans are missing out if they haven’t read Gotham Central. Jokers & Madmen is one of the strongest of the four books (maybe only beaten out by book four, Corrigan) with classic “Batman villain” stakes but given the unique perspective of the people on the ground who are in so much of the danger. It’s one of those series that after reading I was instantly appalled we don’t have a TV show like this. I don’t know that TV would ever get it quite right in terms of narrative and storytelling, but even getting a third of this comic series right on a TV screen would be a major addition to the serial crime drama genre.

Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosh
The follow up to Allie Brosh’s “Hyperbole and a Half”, Solutions and Other Problems is a wild ride of a story book filled with builds, conclusions, disappointments, and at other times a sensation that something is missing. At other times it feels fantastically fulfilling. Most importantly the book has a moment that made me get up and go hug my wife. It’s magically affecting one moment and utterly hilarious the next.

The Sandman: Book Two by Neil Gaiman
I’m really looking forward to how Netflix is going to adapt this one. They managed to do book one fairly well, and included two of my favorite stories from it (the man who had no interest in Death and the one with the cats), but Book Two goes places in terms of the ugly and the graphic. So we’ll see. It’s…interesting. If you haven’t read Sandman though do it, there’s a reason it’s so prevalent.

Batman: Gothic by Grant Morrison & Klaus Janson
After Gotham Central, this might be my new favorite Batman book. You’ll probably never see a Batman movie made like this book unless it’s a cartoon. It’s got some…questionable material in it but it also has a ghost story hidden inside it all. Batman sparring with the supernatural is supremely underappreciated and the operatic themes across the book are even greater appreciated if you go read up on the play being shown off at the book’s outset. What a cool little scary Batman story. I love it. Batman needs to be dealing with ghost stuff way more often.

Music

I’m not including singles because I’ll be here all day.

Across the Spider-Verse — Score & OST by Daniel Pemberton and Metro Boomin’

The only way the Spider-Verse music could improve was by having an OST with more than four songs I want to listen to. They fixed that this time with Metro Boomin’ at the helm of the soundtrack and Daniel Pemberton just continued to up his game with his score. Best release, I’ve been binging both in a playlist that matches the movie incessantly since June. The more people reveal about the score the more you realize that Daniel is also just phenomenally stretching use out of some of the same notes all the time. It’s crazy good.

Lane 8 — Brighest Lights

For some reason I stopped listening to new Lane 8 albums around the time Brightest Lights came out. So I finally started catching up this year. Daniel Goldstein is our generation’s “godfater of melodic house” in such a clear cut way. Brightest Lights feels like an amalgamation of ideas from his first two eras (Rise and Little by Little) smooshed together with a variety of tunes you can easily tune in and out to. His albums make for really great “push play and forget”, except some will infect your ears for days. Title track “Brightest Lights” is a wonderful poetic little anthem and “Two Yard Stone” can’t help but be noticed in its sullen tones. I wanted to also delve into Reviver (album 4) but honestly I couldn’t stop repeating Brighest Lights so Reviver will just have to wait.

Grabbitz — Let Them Only See Butterflies

Really more of an EP than album since it’s only 8 tracks and lasts less than 30 minutes but this was the first full Grabbitz EP I ever gave attention so I want to mention it. I always liked his music, bought singles, so now I really want to go all in on his EPs and albums. His blend of rock and electronic vibes is unmistakable in an industry filled with sound-alikes. “SURRENDER PEACE!” has the bravado presence of Brandon Flowers on a Killers album filled with ten gallons of angst and I can’t help but scream that chorus with him. “The World is So F****d Up” plays with distortion as a guiding presence in a clever way. And “Slow Dance” manages to be the first 80s-wobble-pad song I’ve heard in a while that didn’t make me want to instantly skip it because it’s just so catchy with the lyrics. Topped off with Grabbitz’s usual rap-light breaks pieces “Let It Bloom” and “Can You Feel It Now”, this EP is such an easy treat. I kept coming back to it over the past four months so I can’t help but recommend it.

Le Youth — About Us

I keep joking to my friend Chris that Le Youth’s “About Us” is like a discount Lane 8 album we got this year to tide us over between new Lane 8 albums. But honestly I may like “About Us” more than “Reviver” when the time comes for me to listen to the later some more. Lane 8’s productions tend to have a mixed bag of vocals, some harder to make out than others whether it be for intentional edit/processing reasons or just an aesthetic choice of singers/songwriters. Lane 8’s albums also tend to have one or three songs that are a bit more mystic or non-romantic in nature (though there’s a clear trend towards love from Brighest Lights onwards, no doubt a result of Daniel’s marriage and subsequent fatherhood).

But Le Youth’s sophomore album “About Us” probably deserves better attention and words than a “discount Lane 8 album”. It’s a great collection of songs exploring emotions, parting relationships, and heart. Something about Le Youth’s audio work serves better to create a sort of pop sensibility with the songwriters he worked with. They’re clearer, more forefront, and yet the album still manages to be occasionally memorable when it’s not all about the lyrics. While the album may not carry Lane 8’s knack for extended club journeys, we know Le Youth’s capable of it thanks to his remix of Lane 8’s “I’ll Wait”. The two artists collaborating together for the anthemic “I Will Leave a Light On” for this album signed to Lane 8’s album “This Never Happened” only demonstrates the hopefully bright future ahead for this artist. Definitely a good listen for the year.

Video Games

Immortality

I started this over the holidays last year but didn’t really get that far into it before the New Year arrived. This one is something else. Sam Barlow games definitely strike that chord many would consider pretentious and “not a game”. But personally I’ve enjoyed each of the Sam Barlow releases up to this point and Immortality is no exception. It offers the usual “what happened here?” mystery with just a stupid amount of extra layers to be considering. It’s fascinating to approach the game from a “how did they make this game?” standpoint, a “look at these actors being actors” standpoint, a “look at these actors acting like actors that are acting” standpoint, and something that feels sinister even beyond that. Immortality is an interesting conversation about art and creativity hiding beneath the various reels of films across three film generations that I couldn’t help but keep peering through. Once I felt I couldn’t find anything else I went out there and looked over every YouTube clip possible to see if I missed anything else. It’s enticing to say the least.

Afterparty

The follow-up to Night Dive’s “conversations adventure game”-formula they started with Oxenfree, Afterparty is a fascinating attempt to explore new mechanics for the formula. It’s enjoyable but it feels like the setting is a bigger point of interest compared to the main characters. The dual nature of its dialogue and choice mechanics makes you feel like you’re missing out on potential paths in a more pressing way than Oxenfree, possibly because the game keeps ushering you along its story instead of leaving free time to revisit places and explore. It’s a charming game and its version of the underworld is funny and a unique perspective on the usual Heaven/Hell mythos. It doesn’t feel as exciting or significant as Oxenfree, but it’s fun. The opening sequence, the dance party, and all the taxi rides in particular all stand out for me.

Subnautica: Below Zero

I didn’t complete this one but played it for enough hours to complete it. I finished my character’s main reason for starting her journey, which was to find out why and how her sister died. All that was really left was a series of grinding tasks to solve a predicament and get off planet. Something about the first Subnautica game kept me from getting too far past the first “orbital defense” sequence. It was probably all the grind without much of a present narrative. Below Zero having a voiced protagonist you’re playing with her own voiced journal notes is nice, the added characters to the story make it an experience I was more willing to see through. I’ve heard this one also just solved a lot of lengthy grind problems in the first game but I think that has more to do with the rate of research discovery. Both Subnautica games do something not enough video games do, which is why I tried to get through the first game three separate times. I just wish the sense of progress and making that feel more feasible was more omnipresent. Maybe next game.

Pyre

This is a “work in progress” game that I see myself completing before the year is over. Pyre is really cool and the more underappreciated Supergiant Game. Part sports-game, part RPG, its world is one I always appreciated but I think most found the sports game inside it to be the thing that stopped entertaining players. That was certainly the case for me. Since it seems we may not be seeing Hades 2 for a time, going back to Pyre and finishing it is well worth it in my opinion.

Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One

This one is fresh on my mind since I finished it just a couple weeks back. I was happily surprised by The Sinking City when I played it in late 2021. Frogwares found a neat way to make an open world detective experience that we’re now seeing in a more dynamic fashion with early access game Shadows of Doubt. Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One is Frogwares taking that design from The Sinking City and rebooting their Sherlock Holmes catalogue of games into that new design.

This game takes place on the British-occupied Spanish Isle of Cordona and, sadly, doesn’t quite hit as well as The Sinking City. For starters, Cordona’s constantly bright, clean, and sunny streets aren’t nearly as exciting to traverse. The Sinking City’s Lovecraftian background made for a constant eeriness and uncertainty of what was around the next corner and takes place in the dirty, disheveled city of Oakmont. It took some getting used to to realize how much of what you were seeing was mostly just window dressing but the atmosphere of the game never really went away and you’d encounter creepy violent encounters even on seemingly safe street spaces sometimes. Sherlock Holmes doesn’t work that way and is, by its nature, a mostly pleasant world with gruesome cases you stumble into. The cases were always engaging but by creating a world that didn’t have an immediately concerning sense of space and location, the world map mostly became irrelevant except when trying to find out where the case was taking me. That design still hits great. You go into police stations, city halls, or newspaper outlets to dig through records and find out where the case needs to take you next. You place a marker on your map and make your way to those locations to investigate further. But by stripping the various street encounters, SH: Chapter One has removed some of the dynamics of The Sinking City that made it feel like such a unique place to be in video games. The story isn’t anything to gawk at but the pieces weaving it together are engaging enough and the cases attached are really interesting. It is a little frustrating that these cases never have defined “right and wrong” answers, especially considering we’re talking about master of deduction Sherlock Holmes.

The game still has a variety of collection quests like The Sinking City and a lot of needless clothing items to buy. I’d honestly rather trade all these quests for a few extra cases that reward you with costumes, especially since every case was pretty interesting or engaging. Considering the follow-up game from this Ukranian dev is Sherlock Holmes facing down a Cthulhu-esque cult in “The Awakened”, I’m excited for what’s in the future for these games. Chapter One is a good reboot of these games after The Sinking City set an excitingly high bar. Just expect a couple aspects of this game to not quite get to the same heights. Speaking of open world games though, let me tell you about this other one…

Elden Ring

I’m not done with Elden Ring. I have a complicated history with open world games that only seems to be getting more complicated. So starting Elden Ring was more of a regrettable “It’s finally time, let’s do this” experience for me. I think what most critics have said about the game is true in terms of it being a one of a kind fantastic open world experience. I’m someone who suffers a little from the checkbox video game design with open worlds (see my Horizon: Forbidden West article up above for a more detailed breakdown) but I still enjoy them. So Elden Ring being a “Dark Souls 4, 5, and 6” video game in the style of the “no checkboxes” open world design of Breath of the Wild is a good thing in my book. Sort of. But I can’t gawk at games that boast this scale anymore or find much praise for it in my heart after Horizon last year, Jedi: Survivor this year, and now Elden Ring. It’s really cool. I can’t muster up amazing words for it.

I think Elden Ring has maybe the best “Dark Souls story” since Dark Souls 2 (ignoring Sekiro and Bloodborne), it’s rare a game has me drawing out family trees and jotting down notes about every character and lore drop I encounter. But simultaneously I almost find that a con for a game too large and too big while not maintaining a wiki or any sort of a quest log for you to track NPC side quests. Not all discovery should be organic if you’ve already got the ball rolling. It’s not fun to keep a roster of 40 NPCs in your head. It’s in the open world of this scale and scope where some of the modern-era FromSoft action-RPG designs start to truly sour. Sellen, for me, was, and always has been stuck to a wall from the first time I met her in the first twenty hours. I’m up in the snowy mountains now and Sellen is still stuck for no reason I can figure out. I feel like I didn’t like the first 50% of the bosses in this game aside from a couple standout moments where Elden Ring flouts its newer boss design of “no movesets are completely set in stone now”. The recycled bosses are definitely a problem that I heard coming way before I even touched the game. The concept of an open world that is an expertly crafted series of discoveries that keep surprising you at how big the world is is a lot more interesting than the current norm of “Here’s the whole map, look how big”, but I think the truly incredible part of this game’s scale is in understanding how dense some legacy dungeons are inside the larger overworld. It’s a little telling for me that this massive video game strikes my interest most in uncovering secrets and parts of the game that remind me of the intricate map designs of prior FromSoftware titles and less of Breath of the Wild or Horizon or Nier: Automata or Hollow Knight. I think the game is simultaneously cool and also takes forever to show you the amazing things it has in store for you.

I love this game and once I’m done and the DLC is here and I’ve finished that too, I never want another FromSoftware game like this again. Maybe if I’ve spent a year or two avoiding games of this scale but 2023 also had Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, which remains untouched, and I still haven’t played last year’s God of War: Ragnarok. By the time I get to those and finish them, I’ll be looking another massive open world in the eye again.

You know what I’ve played this year that I’d love to see more of though?

System Shock Remake

Night Dive’s System Shock Remake is a wonder to behold. It’s been in development for what felt like eons and yet it’s such an impressive modernization of an old game dedicated to the style of its time while updating the game to have such a more eerie tone that matches the way we enjoy video games like it today. System Shock was a video game so deeply in need of modernizing and yet it having a remake release like this quickly demonstrates how much of the immersive sim genre is still carried in the genre today: Intricate map design that allows for different approaches to reach the same end goal. Toolset variety (granted it was a bit simpler back then to “here’s different guns” but still heavily varied in this game). The remake’s atmosphere of “you’re a lonely virus worming its way through Shodan’s station-wide body” is a creepy game of isolation, fear, and claustrophobia. Getting the “explore the maze” elements right that I find so rewarding in modern immersive sims (Deus Ex & The Arkane Games) is so appealing in this remake because at its core that’s what so much of this game is really about in its gameplay loop. It even has a scrapping system to get money rewards so you can upgrade your weapons, similar to the vaporizing system in Prey (but no where near as complex). Prey’s circular influence can be felt here too as System Shock Remake is a game that takes place on a space station that is spinning in real time in orbit around Saturn so the occasional lighting that breaks through windows in the game might be lit up by the nearby planet reflecting light off our sun, or it might just be the sea of stars flickering because the station hasn’t spun past the celestial body just yet.

I’m only in the second zone of the game and yet I already want another one of these. Let them do System Shock 2, I’d buy it in an instant.

A Plague Tale: Requiem

This one is hard.

I really liked it. Except when I really didn’t. I kind of hated its stealth and combat gameplay updates over the first game. They were infuriating in the first third of the game. The systems got more complex this time around and the controls were unweildly. The AI felt a little too persistent in that first third as well, refusing to give up on trying to find me in bushes, forcing me out of hiding too often. When the AI wasn’t impossible to work around, the map was, offering little to no cover to make things work. In giving the player character tools to fight back but only so much, being found out at times made me want to restart encounters altogether because the tools you have before you’re discovered are so much more capable of taking out enemies if you can manage switching between tools well enough. But I couldn’t. I’d just scroll through the wheel of tools and panic a lot, forgetting that the hot wheel would slow down time well. It’s weird how much I struggled with this but I think this game and Horizon: Forbidden West are decent examples of how you can have too many layers of tools available for players to think about all of them.

Ultimately this sequel to A Plague Tale: Innocence felt at its strongest during its puzzling, during sequences where you’re just trying to find ways through the rat-infestation zones or exploring. The game’s greatest sequence is maybe right around its midpoint where you’re entreated to stay at a castle on the Island of La Cuna. You, your brother, and a friend get to traverse a massive landscape and explore to find secrets tied to the story’s lore. The visuals in the game help define just how far you’re traveling and what you’re seeing out there and you watch a beautiful summer solstice go from day to dusk to night in the process of three chapters. This naturally has an end result with the entire festival being decimated by the swarm of rats. It’s a series of levels in the story that are hard to forget, transporting the player and the characters to an entire other world in a wider story that spans nations but is, at its core, about a small handful of relationships in a very very very grim story.

The story and sound design are the reasons I found myself being won over despite my hang-ups with the game. The sound design is simply immaculate for me. And the story is something else. It’s an ending you can see coming but don’t feel sure it’s going to quite go there the whole time. There hits a point though where you start to feel the story can’t really be going anywhere else unless it were to end on a cliffhanger. The game’s clearly running out of steam after a certain point. The natural conclusion being one that you really don’t want to see after two games of journeying. I hope the devs here get some time to improve and even refine or simplify the stealth and action mechanics, because if their suggestion post-credits becomes their next title, I’d rather not relive the gameplay frustrations I did this time to experience whatever next tragic horror they have in mind up for me.