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#The Fall of Reverie is a gorgeously animated supernatural thriller

The Fall of Reverie is a gorgeously animated supernatural thriller

The reality will likely be revealed in time

Concord: The Fall of Reverie is a bit totally different from Don’t Nod’s earlier work. It’s not the setting, because the studio is well-known for supernatural mysteries, whether or not it’s Life is UnusualInform Me Why, or others. It’s the look of Concord, and the shape the story takes, that make this a peculiar and intriguing new story for Don’t Nod.

Immediately, the distinction is felt in Concord‘s opening. It’s gorgeously animated, as protagonist Polly units out for the day, encompass by near-future tech. There’s a cutting-edge world pinned up in opposition to houses made in emptied swimming pools that actually units a tone early on. Polly’s returned residence to assist seek for her lacking mom, Ursula, however quickly will get swept up in rather more than she bargained for within the Reverie.

This alternate world, Reverie, homes the assorted Aspirations of Humanity: Bliss and Energy, Bond and Glory, Fact and Chaos. Right here, Polly turns into Concord, a pressure that may make the most of clairvoyant powers and align with these Aspirations to find out a future, for each Reverie and the world.

All in due time

Perhaps it was the beautiful artwork, or possibly it was the deity-driven story, however each jogged my memory of The Depraved + The Divine. There’s an intriguing factor of stability between the 2 tales, as Polly has to find why she will entry Reverie and what powers it’s given her, alongside the hyperlinks it has to her mom’s disappearance.

Screenshot by Destructoid

In observe, this performs out in related trend to a visible novel. Apart from the aforementioned beautiful cutscenes, a lot of the story is advised in dialogue bins between characters, as Polly searches on the earth for clues whereas coping with seemingly primal beings within the different world.

An enormous element of that is the timeline. Don’t Nod lays out the trail forward visually, so the branching paths are all seen. Each has totally different choices, with some decisions opening up different branches and others locking off complete strains of inquiry if taken. It’s a neat construction that’s change into increasingly widespread in branching story-driven adventures, and Concord: The Fall of Reverie does some attention-grabbing issues with it, particularly in linking the branching paths with its characters.

A blissful existence

Every deity embodies an emotion or aspiration, and so decisions within the narrative can elicit crystals representing every side. Over time, you can begin to outline the way you’d prefer to progress via the story; do you search Energy, or do you discover energy within the Bonds you share with others? These components have been compelling, and I assumed it was a neat method to bodily symbolize how Polly approached conflicts.

The place it hit some friction, for me, was in how these crystals are put into observe. Totally different icons on the flowchart could be inaccessible when you don’t have the correct crystals, and the Outcomes—a larger decision to the arc you’re on—are decided based mostly on what crystals you will have earned over the course of play.

Screenshot by Destructoid

That is the place among the long-spanning, timeline-analyzing facets of Concord bought away from me. This isn’t a timeline-hopping recreation, it’s a timeline-informing recreation. When you can transfer between choices to some extent, you’ll ultimately have to decide on a aspect and lock it in. You’re working with extra info than you’d usually have in, say, Life is Unusual; I can see that, if I proceed down my path, Polly will ultimately have the ability to ally herself with the particular person I’m speaking to. However I’m not leaping between viewpoints or alternate universes, as I might in different timeline-driven video games.
So selecting locks and figuring out a future plan of action remains to be, in the end, pushed by alternative. And the selection appears to quickly shift between which deity you’d prefer to garner extra favor from, and likewise which final result you’d prefer to see as Polly and buddies clear up the real-world thriller. It’s that side that I discover actually intriguing, as my drive to spend time with sure deities may pressure me to behave otherwise in the true world and vice versa, however among the long-stretch planning and numbers recreation I used to be taking part in with crystals didn’t really feel as compelling as that in-the-moment friction.

Pantheon of the gods

Nonetheless, I discovered the pantheon of Concord: The Fall of Reverie attention-grabbing. I didn’t get a lot of a way of the principle real-world solid, although the scoop-chasing journalist Jade was a memorable encounter. However the Aspirations themselves add a great quantity of life to what’s occurring, and might even begin to pop up in real-world occasions (unbeknownst to anybody however Polly) as commentators on what’s occurring.

Screenshot by Destructoid

All this thriller and intrigue occurs beneath the watchful eye of MK, a super-corporation that’s taken over the neighborhood. It’s a very attention-grabbing world that Don’t Nod has constructed, with music from Lena Raine backing all of it. It’s admittedly a gradual burn, partly due to twiddling with the timeline. And particularly originally, among the exposition can carry for some time.

Nonetheless, that is Don’t Nod doing one thing fairly totally different with a supernatural thriller drama, and I’m intrigued by it. Even on manufacturing worth alone, I believe Concord: The Fall of Reverie is price maintaining a tally of. There will likely be a demo accessible as a part of this 12 months’s LudoNarraCon. In any other case, Concord will launch on June 8 for PC and Swap, and on June 22 for PS5 and Xbox Collection X|S.

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