![]() ![]() Reaching a fail state in ICO and Shadow of the Colossus wasn’t burdened by jarring checkpointing right in the middle of big events. never relied on neatly choreographed interactive slow-motion set pieces before. In The Last Guardian, climactic moments can so easily fall apart because of the finicky controls and the sluggish camera. Controlling Ico, Wander, and Agro felt true to the experiences their games aimed to convey. Games that resist the player through deliberate design I can respect even when I don’t enjoy them. The “indie” label for story-driven games is usually and unfairly associated with pretension, but I wouldn’t disagree with anyone that slaps it on Virginia with some of its heavy-handed metaphors. Let ambition in creative aspirations run free, for sure, but there is a virtue to strive for in reining in the execution. One big reason as to why that should happen is because stopping with Virginia means settling for overladen imagery, music that’s too grand for its own good, and a strict adherence to a narrative device that turns simple human interactions into stiff, robotic approximations. Whether it’s a problem of mere existence or exposure, it needs to be addressed. We need more games like this that push boundaries and expand audiences’ minds as to what games can be and what they can be about. I long for the day when a game like Virginia with its jump cuts and female POC protagonists and heavy symbolism isn’t immediately a standout because of its choice of storytelling. I can see the thematic layer of obsession being realized through the player base spending days to crack the game wide open, but seeing how the “white shift” plays out and knowing that this is a “pilot” episode for a planned series, I think I know exactly where the devs are more interested in taking this story. I was immediately put off by the sidelining of the strong emotional hook for the meta game, an aspect in gaming and geek culture at large that I can respect but have zero interest in engaging with. I never got to play PT, but I’m probably not wrong in saying Asemblance was heavily inspired by it, recreating that experience, warts and all. The final conclusion was tied to an ARG that demanded the community to work together to get to it. Attempting to reach the last two takes a giant leap from the organic progression you’ve been making, requiring obtuse actions and pixel hunting. There are multiple endings to the game, each one leading to another. The difficulty of confronting the sins of the past is a subject worth tackling on its own, but the developers seem to think otherwise. Recordings of experiments going awry, frantic voice messages pleading you to go home, lights flickering down the hallway to your bedroom, a photo of a child tucked away in a drawer, you know where this is going. And from that moment of serenity outside, you’re on a downward spiral to ever-more dark, constricting spaces in your office and your apartment, finding threads naturally that let you weave the tragedy of this story in your mind. It’s jarring, but there is a human logic to stringing moments separated by days and miles together via one striking image or sound. The way Asemblance advances is very true to how reflecting on memories is a form of time/space travel. You’re drawn to it, this fragile, beautiful thing. Your first memory is of a beaten path through lush green trees, warm light passing through the leaves, lilting music fading in and out, and a bold, blue butterfly resting on a rock. The AI eases you into your journey of self-discovery. The limitations of this technology have you only navigating cramped spaces within those memories, but you only need to hone in on one or two details that stand out through visual or audio cues to piece together a narrative and make progress. You do so by inhabiting a handful of fragments of your past made corporeal by the technology you were researching (a holodeck, basically) before something went horribly wrong. The setup is a familiar one - you wake up in a seemingly abandoned small research/testing facility without your memories and with only a disembodied AI guiding you to reach an understanding of your current situation. There’s one thing this tightly confined walking simulator does perfectly, and that’s establish a mounting sense of dread built on the theme of obsession.
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