(Uh, mild-to-moderate spoilers for a four-year-old game beyond this point, I guess?)

The opening gives the impression that it's going to be a Fear & Loathing-style rampage of deranged wackiness, and it does retain elements of that (particularly if you choose to play Harry as weird as posssible, but as you start getting into it and Harry starts to get his bearings, it doesn't take long at all to take on a strong overtone of crushing melancholy. I haven't gotten far enough to get any real answers about Harry himself, but I am far enough in to have the inescapable feeling that he and I are both really not going to like them when they arrive, and I've uncovered enough of the worldbuilding to grasp that the setting is a lot less Fear and Loathing and a lot more Les Misérables, with a distinct aftertaste of The Quiet Earth.

This is a pretty big tonal swerve to absorb and I'm not sure I like it. I mean, I get it, it's not a creative decision that baffles me like, say, the Many Non-Endings of Mass Effect 3, but it's also kind of bringing me down. I was not in search of a new source of existential dread in my life, y'know?

I still think it's good, and I'm still playing, but the farther into the cave I venture, the more convinced I am that I should probably not be there. I don't think it'll be good for my headspace.

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.