I finished Unavowed

[olivermoss]

It's an amazing classic urban fantasy story with surprisingly tight writing. The art is beautiful. Great characters. I doubt I will write fanfic of MC/Eli, but I am going to think about it.

That said, I am not cut out for point and click adventure games. Twice I gave up and looked up the answer to something and it turned out that I had the answer.... but hadn't found the right damn pixel. Also, the game bugged on me twice. Bugs I could work around but erg....

Close to the end I'd been walking in circles for a while because of how the dialogue tree works, you need to talk to everyone multiple times, I decided to just look up the rest because I was almost to the end of the game and just wanted to get there. My reaction to what I was supposed to do? To close the game and watch a Let's Play. No ragrets. none.

All that being said, if you like classic urban fantasy at all this game nails it so well, and that is so rare. The characters are amazing. And, you can always just watch a playthrough, treat it like a TV show. For me the best experience would have been playing the first half to make some choices and get to know the characters myself, and then switching over.

I am probably going to put a few more hours into the game. The various MC backstories are very different. I watched a review and it was full of scenes and locations I hadn't seen. Also, each mission has a different solve and different dialogue depending on your party. So, it is very replayable... if you like playing it. The voice acting is top notch. It is so rare to get this kind of classic urban fantasy... I just hate the gameplay and slow walking back and forth and baaaack and foooorth with a burning passion. Maybe that's a me thing and people more into this style will think it's great game play but... no. As much as I loved this, the true path for me was the you tube.

I love it. I hate it. I never want to play it again. I am going to go back and do all the various character origins. I have very mixed feelings about this game and hope they do make a sequel.

For context, it's by the studio best know for The Blackwell Legacy games that I have heard people sing the praises of for years due to the story... but OMG I could not play them. I was stuck on what to do on a level to the point I was going nuts... and the solution turned out to be to just sit and stare at something until it started working. I can't even tell you... I'd checked every pixel every interaction every everything over and over and it turned out to be just to look at a thing and like walk away from your computer for a while and come back. I was so mad. The studio made 14 games between the first Blackwell game and Unavowed, so they have definitely evolved from those days.

I have had multiple people recc the Blackwell games to me based on my likes over the past several years.

Please you tube video essay community make like a short thing about the Blackwell games so I can just watch your video and see what the big deal is and never, ever try to play them again. I really want to know why people recc them at me so much, tho...

Comments

[delphi]

I love Unavowed and the Blackwell games, but they're definitely not for all point-and-click fans, let alone folks who aren't already inclined to the format. The puzzles work with standard point-and-click vocabulary rules about half the time, but then they get experimental on certain puzzles - borrowing from more obscure examples elsewhere or just going outside of the box entirely. That said, if you're ever looking for a good LP of the Blackwell series, I remember Laila Dyer's being a great watch.

(LPs of Blackwell Unbound are particularly fascinating to me, because it's set in the '70s and almost every younger streamer I've seen attempt it gets hung up early on with a puzzle that requires thinking to look at a phone book.)

The same studio and some of the same creators have a vampire RPG called Nighthawks in production that I'm really looking forward to. It might appeal to folks who like the storytelling and tone of Blackwell and Unavowed, but without the point-and-click gameplay. And I'm going to be here with bells on if Unavowed gets a sequel.

[olivermoss]

It was the Chinatown level that broke me with the six screens between the apartment and everything else, especially since the game was bugging on me in the screen with the store. It kept acting like I'd selected Eli and it would take me like ten tries to unselect him, and you can't walk past with a character selected.

The grammar of point and click games just doesn't click with me. Maybe Guild Wars 2 just takes up too much of my brain to leave room for much else in gaming. But in terms of it being classic urban fantasy and not some hybrid of that and another genre it's really good.

I am curious as to why Blackwell gets recced at me so much, but I don't think I could watch a full playthrough. I need one of those 1/2 to 3 hour video essays on it :)

[delphi]

Ah, yeah, that would definitely do it. I don't think I hit any bugs in my copy, but there's nothing more frustrating than encountering a glitch in a point and click, where you don't know if something's actually wrong or if you're just missing something.

I can't vouch for why other folks might have recced the Blackwell series, but one of the things that sets it apart for me is that the main character is like Logan in Unavowed - a medium/Bestower of Eternity - with a permanently attached ghost companion who's been something of a family curse. The premise allows for a lot of character development across the series because the protagonist isn't just defined by how she interacts with the world or the more surface conversations with an assortment of NPCs, but by having deeper conversations and reflection with someone who's there every step of the way, both helping her and introducing tension when it comes to never being able to leave the job behind. The series sees life changing a lot for the characters between games, and includes a full flashback game about the ghost companion's past life when he was attached to the main character's aunt. Just a lot of good narrative stuff going on.

[olivermoss]

I had a similar glitch in the dryad fight. I had at least the start solved, but couldn't unselect a certain character. So, based on what other point and click games I'd played, I thought it was telling me I needed to just let the cycle keep looping until a thing happened.

I've watched a few reviews of the Blackwell series and know that it's got a long standing plot. I have a vague impression from how far I did go that the ghost has a secret or is misrepresenting something about his past. A lot of people seem to love it!

[delphi]

I think the games were appreciated for the level of storytelling they brought to the format at a time when point and clicks were just hitting their renaissance period, but I don't think people with broader gaming interests are missing anything by skipping them. Myself, I can't play most AAA games (almost anything 3D or first-person gives me motion sickness or risks seizures), so I liked the series for giving me some decently mature fantasy with strong characters and well-developed settings at a slower, lower-pixelated level than the bigger games at the time. :)

[olivermoss]

Yeah, there was a big pushback to how games market was narrowing and didn't have things like point and click. The Broken Age kickstarter was a wake up call about certain markets, and then damaged a lot of markets by being a terrible game.

I'm glad there is more on the market and in general, much better indie games. A lot of indie studios have been able to refine mechanics and engines so one wrong choices doesn't snarf an entire playthrough... unless it's the point of the game that one wrong choice does that. I like some slower games like Sunless Seas or the Monster Prom series, but, yeah, certain things I just can't click with.

Have you looked at the trailers for Pentiment?

[delphi]

Oh, Pentiment looks incredibly cool! I'll have to check out more actual gameplay footage, because the movement in the trailer looks like A Problem for me, but it otherwise seems extremely up my alley.

[mistressofmuses]

I hadn't seen anything about this game, but it sounds great, at least in terms of the plot and the experience if you can make it through the gameplay!
(I have heard Blackwell mentioned in passing, but know very little about it either.)

All the things it sounds like it does well make it seem really interesting! ...but I have a feeling I might get frustrated by a lot of the same things. I don't MIND puzzle games that have a certain amount of "click the right thing to solve" to it, but there is NOTHING I hate more than KNOWING the solution to something, and being unable to actually get the game to realize that I know. (Whether that's that I know the solution but skipped one clue that the game wants me to find but won't tell me to look for, or because I'm trying to click the thing but I'm one pixel to the left of where it wants me to click.)

[olivermoss]

Sometimes old game engines and newer systems with faster CPUs cause funky problems. Based on the reviews I don't feel like the problems are widespread, it feels like just me. Still, yeah, bugs suck.

Also, pixel hunting is the worst. It's maybe okay for vet players of the genre, but for me I am like... no. But still, it hits the genre, doesn't try to subvert, it just goes for it. And that's awesome.