Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style
Pyrodactyl's Unrest, released this week, tells the kind of story that very few games are willing (or able) to tell... And there's no one thing I can point to to explain how it does this so well. It all seems very straightforward at first glance; an ancient Indian kingdom in the midst of a brought and on the brink of upheaval, where players are faced with moral choices and consequences and also snake people. Just another weekday.
But there's something very different about Unrest. Something that kind of sticks in my throat. Now maybe that doesn't sound very pleasant, but I'd rather play a game that sticks in my throat than one that I can swallow in one easy gulp any day.
So with that in mind, let's break down what makes Unrest stand out:
Nothing is Black and White
I'm sure I'm not the only person who has learned to interpret the options a game provides to determine which is the "correct" choice. There are usually a few tells that make it easy enough to pick what's needed for a desired outcome. Avoiding this kind of telegraphing is one of the things that makes Telltale's The Walking Dead such a powerful storytelling experience, and the same is true of Unrest.
The subtlety and variety of options available to the player makes it all the more unsettling when a character is caught up in a serious situation, because there is no clue way out. Everything is on the line -- even more than the characters themselves realize -- and the only thing the player can rely on is their own horribly flawed, horribly human judgements.
Every Role is Equal
Over the course of the game the player inhabits a whole cast of characters, and every choice they make matters both in terms of how the story will unfold and how it will shape those characters themselves. These aren't all the movers and shakers that someone might expect in a story of this nature, either. There are familiar perspectives present right alongside ones we may never have considered, and they all have equal weight. For each princess wandering around her palace there's a peasant searching for her way to the glamor and promise of the city, or a priest tiptoeing around the slums aiming to do good (and live to do good again.)
When one character's role is complete (or complete for the time being) the game moves on swiftly to the next character, the next map, and the next piece of the puzzle... But every character has their own goals and interests to pursue, and there's no clear way to make all their objectives work together in the best interests of the country. How could there be? How could a farmer conceive of actions made in her tiny little world snowballing into all out war?
Everyone is Connected
All these stories may seem distinct, but they converge time and time again in both obvious and unexpected ways. Even the most seemingly inconsequential of interactions can leave its mark. It was an exercise in the Butterfly Effect when I set betrothed peasant girl Tanya on horseback towards the city and away from an unwanted marriage, only to find out several chapters later that this put her liege, a widowed noblewoman already on the edge, in a very precarious political position. Tanya's solution became someone else's problem, and someone else's after that.
No One is Safe
If you haven't gathered as much already, Unrest's world is not terribly kind. In my first two roles I was painfully naive, taking the "be cool and talk it out and everything will be okay" stance whenever I could. I talked to anyone and everyone indiscriminately, and tried to be as accommodating to them as possible. I lost that confidence quickly, when I learned that I couldn't wriggle my way out of every unfavorable outcome with charm alone. Eventually I found myself in the slums with a bag full of medicine, nervously eyeing an alley full of starving children before opting to take another route. A fellow priest had warned me that the children -- the sick, starving children -- were dangerous, and even though I was there to help I decided to heed that advice.
Another priest had suggested I sell the medicine on the black market. Doing so would allow me to pay for my family to be protected, but still...
I'll leave it at that. I don't want to spoil things any more than I may have already. Ultimately Unrest offers a glimpse at the inner workings of an intricate machine in a way that very few games before it have, and I suspect it'll be stuck in my throat for a while.
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