In quest building there have always been legendary teams like LucasArts or Telltale Games. But along with the teams in this very adventure generation, there have always been significant individuals who tend to freely migrate from studio to studio, create their own teams and generally commit all sorts of outrages.
Take for example, Tim Shafer (Tim Schafer). Former "resident" LucasArts, who gave the world Grim Fandango And Full Throttle, later created his own studio called Double Fine and managed to “inherit” such notable projects as Brutal Legend And Psychonauts.
However, it seems that everyone, even the most successful industry guru, from time to time wants to return to the roots. Okay, maybe not to everyone, but to many. Here we go Shafer decided to shake the old bones and release an adventure game that combines the traditions of the “golden age” of point-and-click and some fresh stuff.
If earlier you didn’t have enough examples to understand what an idyllic picture is, then here they are. That is, he. That is, it.
In any unclear situation, make a sacrifice
The game tells two unrelated stories. At first glance unrelated, but we understand that everything can’t be that simple! We are allowed to freely switch between heroes at any time, getting from the fantasy world to the technogenic-cosmic world and back.
Both characters whose fate we are asked to follow are teenagers. The girl Vella comes from a small village of bakers, where the annual Maiden Festival is held – an event involving human sacrifices to appease a monster called Mog Chotra. Our heroine was very lucky: she became a candidate for eating. A great honor, general congratulations, a sweet table and other attributes of a successful, albeit short life remain in the past when Vella manages to avoid falling into the monster’s belly, while providing herself with a bunch of new problems.
At this very time, on the spaceship, the boy Shai is slowly growing up alone. His only company is a computer, endowed with obvious maternal traits. The miracle of technology calls the boy his son, protects him in every possible way and tries to the best of his ability to create home comfort on the ship – on the one hand. On the other hand, to provide Shai with a feeling of being needed and to entertain him at the same time. Therefore, the boy carries out “toy” missions, saving little woolly men from all sorts of nonsense – from an ice cream avalanche, for example. But the set of tasks does not change from time to time, and they were originally designed not for a teenager, but for a child of about five years old. Therefore, when Shai almost accidentally manages to break out of his daily routine and meet the mysterious Marek, who promises him real missions to save defenseless creatures, the boy is delighted.
The girl on the perch is very sad – the terrible monster refused to eat her. It’s a shame to be unnecessary even to a monster! Even for lunch.
Forward to freedom
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There’s really no connection between the two stories, is there?? However, if you take a closer look at them, it is easy to see that there is a semantic overlap here. Both the boy and the girl grow up in an atmosphere of lies and absurdity. Both are trying to break out of the vicious circle they are in. So, from the very beginning, Vella asks everyone – her relatives, the manager of the holiday, the people from the neighboring village: “Why can’t you just kill the monster instead of feeding it to people?”?“Naturally, in response, everyone just twists their finger at their temple. How can one attack such a noble creature, which spares cities and villages, does not ruin them, as before, but is content with only small human sacrifices once a year??
Just as Vella is oppressed by the network of absurd logic of the inhabitants of her world, Shay is also oppressed by the endless invisible boundaries set by his caring “mother”. The boy is not even allowed to walk around the ship for his own pleasure: he must strictly adhere to the once and for all established routine. Lights out at such and such a time, wake up at such and such a time. For breakfast – cereal, always cereal, even if he is given the mocking opportunity to choose which box this simple food will be poured from today. The contents of the boxes are absolutely the same, as are the “missions” that the poor prisoner has to carry out day after day. It is not surprising that Shai perceives the arrival of Marek, who helps him escape the attention of the omnipresent computer, as a long-awaited liberation.
Is it just liberation?? Or a new trap? IN Broken Age this is not easy. All the heroes’ efforts aimed at feeling free constantly run into the logic of the very world in which they live. It seems that this is one of the main ideas of the adventure game. And hence the taste of slight hopelessness that arises, despite the general humorous style of the dialogues.
Healthy snoring is evidence of spiritual harmony. Or at least a hearty meal before bed. The great guru clearly lives in harmony with himself. And eats well.
Goodbye coin
Game mechanics Broken Age – this is a typical, classic point-and-click model. We walk everywhere we go, interact with everything we interact with. The traditional “inspect” and “use” buttons are a thing of the past, as is the legendary “coin” with action options. Tim Shafer keeps up with the latest trends in adventure development and reduces all manipulations with objects or characters to one single click.
The tasks you have to cope with are simple and unpretentious. In most cases, it’s enough just to carefully walk around a fairly large location to understand what needs to be done. There are usually no “unnecessary” items in the inventory: almost everything that we have left is useful for something. In this case, the property does not suddenly disappear. If we put some thing in our pocket, it will remain in our pocket until we lose it. Reasonably we will lose, it is logical from the point of view of the world and the plot.
There are very few multi-move combinations here, and NPCs also like to stun us by suddenly giving us an item for free, in search of which we ran around half the location and completed several related tasks. So, when Vella, who finds herself in a settlement located on the clouds, needs special shoes for walking on air, she can easily first help a local shoemaker aunt find a suitable knife to replace the lost one, wait for the blessed lady to make her shoes, discover that these shoes are absolutely the wrong size, and only then receive a pair of suitable “flip-flops” as a gift from another girl for sacrifices.
One could say that repeated runs through the levels are a little tiring, but due to the simplicity of the riddles, we don’t get stuck anywhere for a long time. And even if you get stuck, you can always switch to another story to clear your head and then bite into an incomprehensible stage of the passage with renewed vigor.
It’s not surprising to you that the main driving “core” of a spaceship, this apparatus, knits a navigation… scarf when you need to make a hyperspace jump? Shay is not at all surprised by all this.
Harmony and lightness
This is not to say that the scriptwriters Broken Age abuse humor. They generally use humor in very limited doses, rather in the spirit of light irony, without overt “comic”. For example, people who moved to the clouds to follow their guru, who preaches divine lightness and the rejection of “extra” vowels in the name – a wonderful and very unobtrusive parody of sectarianism as it is.
No less pleasant impression is left by Shay’s dialogues with his computer “mother” or with little woolly men, whom he at some point suddenly finds not in the usual positions of the oppressed, who need to be saved from their oppressors or from danger, but during a break, playing cards. It turns out that they are quite happy with their position as hired actors, but they don’t like the “spectator” himself, for whom everything happens.
By the way, attempts to use an item incorrectly here almost never run into standard “excuses” like “no”, “I don’t want”, “I won’t”. The character says something cute or funny every time we try to do something stupid. In essence, this is one of the indicators of a truly well-developed script.
Let’s add to the equation described above pleasant hand-drawn graphics with original surreal landscapes and wonderful voice acting with Elijah Wood (Elijah Wood) as Shay – and we’ll get a really high-quality adventure game. More precisely, part of the adventure, because in the more or less near future we will have a continuation.
The spaceship window has a strange shape, doesn’t it?? In fact, hints of the truth, which we learn only in the final part of the first act, are scattered throughout the game. But only a very attentive lover of the genre will pay attention to all these little details in time and be able to interpret them correctly.
Big name Tim Shafer sounded again in the field of quest making, and sounded powerfully. Broken Age cannot be called a revolution in the genre, just as one cannot talk about a noticeable slide into retro stylistics or retro mechanics. This is just a decent, interesting game with which you can happily spend an evening or two – and want more.
Pros: fascinating plot; dynamic rhythm of the story; an interesting idea at the heart of the script; pleasant dialogues; original art.
Cons: not found.