As Dusk Falls, the proven narrative adventure from Quantic Dream veterans

In almost all fields of entertainment,writing It represents the true cornerstone of artistic expression, and in video games it is often difficult to identify an author’s influences on their work, as in environments such as cinema or music the author’s hand is often very prominent behind their own creature’s forms. Works. This will be because directors will be much more famous than game designers, because there will be many more people working on video games that have a direct impact on the artistic components of the final product, but still struggling to find the idea behind each piece of work. Video games have a definite artistic vision that is the result of the creativity of the people who created them.

For example, most gamers are probably not familiar with Glen Schofield’s writing path and would be surprised that Callisto Protocol is so similar to the Dead Space series. Similarly and in parallel, Caroline Marchal from Quantic Dream Indoor / Night After working as Principal Game Designer on games in the caliber of Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls, it was hard to assume that the author’s creative baggage could distract him from the artistic “elephant rouge” that ties together all the projects he’s attached to. devoted many years of his professional life.

As we’ve known since last summer, Caroline Marchal and other Inner/Night veterans’ new creation, As Dusk Falls, the interactive drama recently appeared on the Xbox & Bethesda Showcase, now one step away from its release, pinned to PC and Xbox systems next July 19′ until.

Less than a month after its release, we were finally able to Try As Dusk Falls being able, for the first time, to test the quality and depth of the narrative of the complex system of choices that promises to make us the undisputed architects of the fate of a cohesive cast of characters. Here, below, is all we discovered.

Two families, a motel and a robbery gone wrong

We already mentioned this in the preview of As Dusk Falls, but it’s worth taking a step back and starting from the beginning by talking about Interior / Night’s interesting debut game. The game pretty faithfully follows the same gameplay that sets most games apart from the rest. interactive adventures Quantic Dream puts the actor at the center of a series of dramatic events that will mark the lives of two families in a multi-generational drama where our choices will have significant repercussions decades later.

The formula is nearly identical to other famous representatives of the genre like Detroit: Become Human and Heavy Rain, but As Dusk Falls wants to put in its own formula, and it does so by adopting a bizarre artistic style that has never been seen in a video before. Game, mixing environments 3D and 2D illustrations to create a stunning interactive graphic novel.

In this test we had free access first two episodes The adventure is told from the perspective of two protagonists whose fates are irreparably intertwined in the remote motel that is the scene of this first phase of the story. The first is Vince, a middle-aged man who moves in with his family and drives through this desolate county in Arizona. The second is Jay, a local boy who gets involved in an incident with his two brothers. robbery attempt gone bad This results in a violent hostage crisis at the Desert Dream motel, where Vince, his wife, father, and daughter Zoe are located, and will likely be another protagonist of the story.

You might consider any more details on the plot of As Dusk Falls as spoilers, so we’ll add that the story seems well-blended throughout the first two episodes, even though the story is more than a few chapters away. trite Typical of crime-themed TV series, where the characters always do stupid things to keep the plot moving. Apart from this obvious flaw, the game has managed to pitch a story full of suspense and twists, at a borderline tight situational pace that only slows down in some rare cases to focus on characterization and deepening of the characters. narrative backgrounds, often through flashbacks that reveal even the most significant effects of the plot.

No doubt we particularly enjoyed this first taste of As Dusk Falls, and from a certain point of view, we can’t wait to reprise the roles of Vince and Jay to explore the ending of the story. We’ve only discovered a small part of Caroline Marchal’s new interactive drama, but the beginning is definitely more than promising.

same game as always

As mentioned earlier, As Dusk Falls does not intend to waste valuable development resources on refurbishing a gaming rig that has worked well in Quantic Dream’s previous narrative experiences. In that sense, therefore, we were not surprised to see its large number of them. fast time eventAlong with the classic screen choices, it also leads to significant plot deviations. While it’s still too early to understand how profound the effects of these branches will be, repeating the same episode more than once has allowed us to explore how the success or failure of some of them has led to unprecedented effects on the narrative.

However, one element that may surprise us has to do with the apparent simplicity of the QTE set available here. it’s much harder to fail more than any other interactive adventure ever tried. It’s not clear whether this depends on a precise Interior/Night design choice, the control system we use (mouse) or our frontend, but as far as we’ve seen it’s not possible. Missing a quick time event due to an incorrect input as Twilight Falls: The only way to get a false is to not run the correct command within the time limit, a possibility we only encountered once during our testing. We’re having a hard time expressing ourselves about this as we don’t know what this facility is really up to and thankfully this isn’t the place for it, but we look forward to investigating the issue in July.

the value of one’s choices

When we talk about interactive adventures, analysis sooner or later converges on the weight and impact they have. player choices For productions like As Dusk Falls, a critical and fundamental aspect exists in the course of history that has no more important responsibility than giving us the keys to the narrative. Obviously, this issue can only be properly addressed in the review, but we allowed ourselves to replay the two central episodes of the test, each time trying to arrive at new narrative scenarios. To better understand the implications of each decision, summary table at the end of the episode, it shows all the possible paths history can take, in much the same way that Detroit: Become Human did. As with the adventure packed by Quantic Dream, even in As Dusk Falls we won’t have complete freedom to shape the ending of each episode, but the good news is that we can significantly influence how we do it through our choices. arrive at it. final. Some characters may die, some may be injured, and although it is not currently clear how these situations will develop at the end of the game, it is clear that some of the player’s choices will directly affect the fate of the characters. .