Orwell: Ignorance is Strength

“Orwell: Ignorance is Strength” puts focus on the relationships of its characters, offering a story that demonstrate the consequences and effects that misinformation has on its people. While not nearly as strong of a showing as its fantastic predecessor, there is a unique experience to be gain from this second season. A timely and deeply frightening recreation of our reality.

There was a good amount of improvement to Ignorance is Strength over the original Orwell but there was a few instances where it took a step back as well. One thing I thought Orwell lacked that the sequel fixed was voice acting for the phone calls. It was not only a nice feature to add but the voice acting was well done. You can also now influence social media by finding data chunks that fit a certain narrative. The feature itself was decent but it kind of tied into one thing I didn’t like about Ignorance is Strength and that was the perspective. In the original you were doing ethically dubious deeds but were at least trying to find a bomber. In the sequel your objective felt far less worth the effort after the first chapter or so. One thing I will say is that I fully believe many governments would take part in the kind of petty actions that happen in this game. While I was a bit disappointed in where the story went I at least enjoyed the characters and the twists and turns they took as well as how the sequel tied into the original. It takes place at the same time as the original with you working on a totally separate case although it does overlap slightly. One more issue I had was that once again I found that the game didn’t stay true to what it asks of you. Your boss says to leave out data that doesn’t matter but at least a couple times I had to add, what I deem to be, subjective data chunks that were more opinion than fact in order to progress. I played Ignorance is Strength on Linux. It never crashed and I didn’t notice any bugs or spelling mistakes. There are no graphics options. Alt-Tab didn’t work. The game saves on exit but there is just one save file so it always gets overwritten. The game is capped at 60 FPS. My System: Intel i7-6700 | 16GB DDR4-3000 CL15 | Intel HD 530 | Mesa 21.2.6 | Trisquel 10.0.1 | Mate 1.24.0 | Kernel 5.18.5-gnu

The basic idea is the same as that of the predecessor, and it boils down to this: You are $YourAvatarNameHere, a foreign-based employee of The Nation. And you will have been chosen for listening and reading into other people's conversations. You have access to web-sites and to NPCs' devices such as computers (almost void of data) or smartphones. There is an opposition forming. And your task is to make their claims and allegations implausible. Therefore you are connected to a cloud tool called "Orwell" (named after that Blair guy, apparently), and you may upload certain phrases / text blocks into this system, which will then make available new resources for digging up dirt. You are paired with an advisor who, though not capable of controlling your input into Orwell, tries to steer you through your actions. And assesses those chunks of data once uploaded. Based on what chunks you drag and drop, the story will take one path or the other. The overall topic here seems to be surveillance abuse and fabricating stories for an alleged common good. Game duration 3-6 hours. Even though I like the overall idea and shape of O:IS, I do not like the following: - The tutorial-style initial feedback by your data analyst cannot be turned off. Which makes playing yet another outcome annoying. - None of the endings is satisfying. You may continue playing after the final sequence, but things will not function properly then. This is bad design. - Once you hover over text chunks, you will be provided with a summary. Those summaries are flawed far too often though, leaving you in doubt whether or not to upload. - The drag-and-drop style costs a lot of time. In order to make certain inputs, you first need to find a text containing that input, then upload it only to be able to enter it. - Minor inconsistencies as well. - Read A LOT. Browse a lot. Tiresome. - You are not able to pick a "standard white-guy" character. Only minorities. - Pat plot, no twist. An okay game. Liked it.

This game has the same problems as part 1, namely it is a non-interactive story (or barely-interactive). You are on rails and eventually you end up following every update and just putting datachunks at random to advance the plot. One change is that you now have a clock, and actions take time. This does not mean that it is relevant. The advisor (which is really annoying) makes you think that this is the case, but I've missed some deadlines and nothing serious happened. Another change is that you have some input boxes as well. That makes you think a little bit, in the sense that you have to choose a datachunk from a profile to upload. Needed to advance the plot, but you won't lose sleep trying to figure out what to input. As for the rest, just read my review of Orwell while you find something else to play (like Floor 13).

I was shocked to find out that i couldn't play season 2 without paying another bunch of cash. is that for real? what a drag....