Well I finished it.. As a player who played the original, I didn't feel this game lived upto to the original vision of Sokal had, there was a definite lack of artistic skills with camera angles and emotional telling of the story that only Sokal could of created. Its felt kind of like looking at a copy of the Mona Lisa and thinking we'll its okay buts its no original. The gamification of the find the investigation stories was done badly and I feel it was put the there to make the game feel longer, with no consideration for cinematography of the story so unfortunately this had the side effect of drawing away from the main story as you were busy trying to find the documents and notes. So instead of being a masterpiece of story it becomes a hidden object game to write random articles. The release during a Trump presidency is unfortunate, and made certain parts of the story a bit to real. Still worth a play of course, visually its pretty as long as you don't look to hard at the flora and fauna animations. The story still is fairly faithful to the original, a few minor changes I wouldn't of done but otherwise a competent simulacra. My only hope is if they re-make anymore of Sokal games, they don't gamify them the same way. Refine the graphics, refine the visuals, but pay attention to the camera angles, pacing, emotion and audio otherwise you will ruin his legacy.
It was as weird and wonderful as almost all whitebirds games are I completed it in about 8 hours. The story is very religion heavy but that doesn't distract from the strangeness of it all and is really wonderful tale. Excellent experience but short.
The story is everything one would expect of Benoit Sokal, and the art brings back memories of Syberia in places. The only criticism is the detective wrapup of each section of the case, where you have to pin evidence based on the question asked. Which in itself is a great concept but when your pinning 10 items and getting 1 wrong results in no progress or hint on whats right is brutal. I got through a few without cheating but after looking a few up noticed alot of the questions asked have no bearing on the evidence your supposed to be pinning. This could be a translation issue or a me issue (overthinking). Either way when you get a question such as Why did ... commit the murder? You expect to be pinning a motive, not a means or opportunity evidence like this seems to want you to. However that niggle aside finding the evidence and discussinge evidence was kinda fun, though did feel like a walking simulator most of the time but once I accepted that it was kinda relaxing. Overall though if your a Sokal fan, its worth it for the experience and the artwork. Otherwise I'd say give it a pass theres better detective tales.
Loved the intial setup, nice mystery and the story was great but the late orb puzzle killed the pace dead along with the puzzle that followed, consequently ended up on my pc 5 months longer than it should of by which time I forgot the story points so the ending was abit lost on me but overall good puzzles minus the old school crypticnous at times.
This is a unique and for the first 30 minutes I was in awe of the beauty of the world, and overall simplicity of its style. After that I realised the experience is largely a photography game taking photos then improving on the photos in order to unlock mini game style quests and unlock more areas to take more photos rinse and repeat. Now dont get me wrong the characters are great, and the two three levels I experienced of the story seemed intriguing but I feel Its more aimed for really young children than adults, Would of been nice to see more environmental puzzles and less photography in order to progress but as it stand the experience is a little lack luster and gets dull quick.
