Yesterday

Wow, it's....been quite a while.  I got really busy with theatre shows and writing that I almost forgot about my very nerdy blog.  Well, that and I've almost had no time for gaming, much less finding time for obscure adventure games.  Recently though Pendulo Studios, the creators of Runaway (which I haven't played yet), released a brand new original adventure game Yesterday.

It was awesome enough that a new adventure game was being made; the fact that it was also a dark mystery thriller was just icing on the cake for me and cemented my decision to buy it.  Murder mysteries and thrillers have always been a guilty pleasure of mine, and from what I saw of the trailer it was shaping up to be a fantastic one.  In fact, this is one of the only games I bought without reading a review first, which is rare for me.

For most of the game, you play as John Yesterday: a specialist in Satanic cults who has been hired by mysterious millionaire Henry White  to research and find information on "the Order of the Flesh", a ancient cult known for its love of alchemy, torture and devil worship.  The twist is that Yesterday has already investigated the case.  He then for unknown reasons attempted suicide, was discovered by his employer before it was too late, and woke up in a hospital with no recollection of who he is or what he's doing.  And so you set off to put the pieces together of your previous investigation, hoping to find the answers to the mystery as well as your past.

Why do amnesia stories always end up with guns?

So how did it turn out?

Well, it wasn't a bad game.  It was far from a bad game.  It has a unique cartoonish yet dark art style and cinematics that at times almost play out like a comic book.  It's soundtrack provides a great creepy atmosphere, particularly it's main whistled theme.  And for a game that was purely a point-and-click adventure depending solely on inventory puzzles, this one was enjoyably challenging at times.  It took me a few moments to get back into "Combine every inventory item imaginable" mode, but once I did the solutions became a lot more intuitive and I didn't need to rely on the in-game hint system in the slightest.  Really, it had the makings of a great game.  And yet...

Once again it all comes down to story.  For about 80% of the game, I felt as though I had been plopped into the middle of a novel.  Granted, this is an amnesia story.  You're not supposed to know everything.  But there's a way to handle the reveals in amnesia stories, and Yesterday kind of handles it in the clunkiest way imaginable.

For one, one of the twists of the story is revealed way too early in the game.  In the opening sequence of the game, you learn who the enemy is right away.  Then, just as you're learning this and getting to know characters, the timeline whisks ahead thirty years and you're suddenly playing as John, who has just woken up with amnesia and who we learn is employed by the very same mad man we just saw.  Most amnesia stories work best when you're on the same page as the protagonist, experiencing their memories as they come back.   As it was though, I knew more than John did right away, and it made it more frustrating the more I saw him interact with the Evil One.

Never send a nerd after a deranged hobo...that's all I'm sayin...

Which also leads to the characters.  Again, I felt somehow out of the loop.  The game had to tell me most of the time what and who I SHOULD be caring about, and yet not once did I feel particularly connected to any one of them.  John learns of the betrayal of his employer early on in the game (this isn't really a spoiler in my opinion).  It's supposed to feel like a great betrayal, but the truth is we never got to know either character long enough to really care.  We never got a sense of how grateful John was to his employer unless the game explicitly told us in exposition, nor did we ever really trust the employer in the first place.

The same goes for the rest of the characters.  Whether it's the love interest, the wise mentor, or even the sketchy hotel clerk, somehow we're expected to be invested in these characters immediately.   That's tricky when you have a short game, and I'm sure there's a way to pull it off.  But Yesterday fell short.

Oh no!  Someone's in danger!...meh

To top it all off, there's some fairly clunky dialogue.  There's a difference between having a dark and gritty adult story and TRYING to have a dark and gritty adult story.  The writers couldn't seem to trust the story and just threw in random swear words and sexual references to remind us that THIS IS GRITTY.  It was really unnecessary and felt more like a ten year old who had just discovered he could swear than a hardened criminal who grew up with it.

And then, just when the story STARTS to get really interesting, the game just ends.  This game is short.  Very short for the $30 I paid for it.  It's almost more frustrating in a way, because I was finally starting to get invested and to see the potential for just how fun this story could be.  In many ways it felt more like a demo than a full game.

Again, Yesterday isn't a bad game.  The puzzles were enjoyable, the graphics were great, the voice acting was pretty good for the most part, and there was that very brief moment when the plot became very interesting.  But it wasn't quite enough to make up for the clunky story, and in a story-driven game it's really obvious when it doesn't work.  I would be interested to see what else Pendulo comes out with in the future and to see if their storytelling will develop.  If anything, it's driving me further to try and see what it might take to write for games myself.