Played a new game called XEL yesterday I got on sale.
The gameplay was ok, but the writing and voice acting had me uninstalling pretty quickly.
The female MCs massive underbite jawline was a warning sign (2020 art style). I liked the art style other than the MCs jawline. It reminded me of something bright from the PS2 era. That's one of the reasons I bought it (even at a dollar or whatever I paid for it)
Then the writing ended up sounding like peak 2020. As an example, the MC accused the a village elder of running a cult almost immediately after meeting him. Just a very snarky, entitled character. As another example, the MC snarkily attacked the first person she'd seen in the entire game for not helping to fight the boss she just beat -- it's like, why do you think you're entitled to some random passerby putting their life on the line to help you beat some robot you woke up by fat fingering a button just now?
You can have an unlikable protagonist in a video game and have it work -- Kain from the Legacy of Kain series is specifically an arrogant, murderous, Machiavellian, and so on. But he's well written and interesting. Actually, contrast the Kain from most of the series with Kain from Legacy of Kain 2 who was written like a bad fan fiction version of Kain. In the same way, you can do the snarky unlikable protagonist, but you need to walk a line because there needs to be things that make you want to continue on your journey with the protagonist. In the Legacy of Kain series, it's that as the player you do like hearing his insights into the world and there was a good amount of world building in Nosgoth. To an extent, Raziel from the same series was an judgmental, snarky, and in some ways unlikable protagonist, but you can see a sort of nobility and a desire .
The voice acting had decent audio engineering, but there seemed to be a lack of effective direction in the line reads. It was really distracting. An example of this from shortly before I uninstalled the game was a one-off line read by a villager. The MC speaks to the villager who randomly speaks in this drawn out, breathy manner, like deep awe just talking about someone who isn't present. It's hard to describe since I'm not in that field, but it was just a relatively constant mismatch in tone between what was occurring and what was being said. It's not as bad as the first Resident Evil which is the gold standard in this, but it was still distracting, sort of sitting in the uncanny valley of voice acting.
I think these two things might even be OK, but there's another balance that you need to be careful of in game design: This game has long sequences in between puzzles or combat where you're just walking around the environment in linear paths to the next thing to do. Pacing in this way can be appropriate in some cases, but you have to be very careful. In some game worlds, long sequences of environmental travel are an opportunity for the player to see the world that's been built, and it's an opportunity for environmental story telling. In other games, this sort of pacing can be helpful because it gives the player time to anticipate the next reward in the form of a cutscene or something. Again, Legacy of Kain is a great example of this, where you might travel through the semi-open world to the next puzzle or cutscene, but when you arrive you're rewarded with excellent writing and voice work.
Anyway, I don't recommend. There's many better choices out there, including the Legacy of Kain series that's on sale for similar prices right now on GOG.
The gameplay was ok, but the writing and voice acting had me uninstalling pretty quickly.
The female MCs massive underbite jawline was a warning sign (2020 art style). I liked the art style other than the MCs jawline. It reminded me of something bright from the PS2 era. That's one of the reasons I bought it (even at a dollar or whatever I paid for it)
Then the writing ended up sounding like peak 2020. As an example, the MC accused the a village elder of running a cult almost immediately after meeting him. Just a very snarky, entitled character. As another example, the MC snarkily attacked the first person she'd seen in the entire game for not helping to fight the boss she just beat -- it's like, why do you think you're entitled to some random passerby putting their life on the line to help you beat some robot you woke up by fat fingering a button just now?
You can have an unlikable protagonist in a video game and have it work -- Kain from the Legacy of Kain series is specifically an arrogant, murderous, Machiavellian, and so on. But he's well written and interesting. Actually, contrast the Kain from most of the series with Kain from Legacy of Kain 2 who was written like a bad fan fiction version of Kain. In the same way, you can do the snarky unlikable protagonist, but you need to walk a line because there needs to be things that make you want to continue on your journey with the protagonist. In the Legacy of Kain series, it's that as the player you do like hearing his insights into the world and there was a good amount of world building in Nosgoth. To an extent, Raziel from the same series was an judgmental, snarky, and in some ways unlikable protagonist, but you can see a sort of nobility and a desire .
The voice acting had decent audio engineering, but there seemed to be a lack of effective direction in the line reads. It was really distracting. An example of this from shortly before I uninstalled the game was a one-off line read by a villager. The MC speaks to the villager who randomly speaks in this drawn out, breathy manner, like deep awe just talking about someone who isn't present. It's hard to describe since I'm not in that field, but it was just a relatively constant mismatch in tone between what was occurring and what was being said. It's not as bad as the first Resident Evil which is the gold standard in this, but it was still distracting, sort of sitting in the uncanny valley of voice acting.
I think these two things might even be OK, but there's another balance that you need to be careful of in game design: This game has long sequences in between puzzles or combat where you're just walking around the environment in linear paths to the next thing to do. Pacing in this way can be appropriate in some cases, but you have to be very careful. In some game worlds, long sequences of environmental travel are an opportunity for the player to see the world that's been built, and it's an opportunity for environmental story telling. In other games, this sort of pacing can be helpful because it gives the player time to anticipate the next reward in the form of a cutscene or something. Again, Legacy of Kain is a great example of this, where you might travel through the semi-open world to the next puzzle or cutscene, but when you arrive you're rewarded with excellent writing and voice work.
Anyway, I don't recommend. There's many better choices out there, including the Legacy of Kain series that's on sale for similar prices right now on GOG.
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