Day 15 - Dread Delusion - Review Part 2
RPG, Walking Sim, Nightmare Fuel ·
Sam’s Take:
This is a thing we are allowed to do on these reviews btw. If we want to replay the game and talk about it more, we can and will. That’s actually what the “replay percentage chance” at the bottom refers to. Should have mentioned that earlier. These re-reviews will assume you already saw the last review, so we’ll be skipping over things like what genre the game fits into. We good? Alright moving forward.
With more time, the game’s flaws have started to bubble up a little more. First of all, it seems like your character build basically doesn’t matter. Sure the agility focused character will move a little faster, the charm character can bypass the occasional fight, etc, but after six hours of play I have not reached any point where I thought “woah, I wonder how that would work with a different build”. Every character is strong enough to fight everything, even with no strength. Every character is fast enough to run away, even with no agility. Every character can cast all the spells they need, even with no magic, and the charm checks show up infrequently enough to be more of a cute moment rather than a quest-shaking option.
This isn’t quite an Immersive Sim, where you have a bunch of different ways to deal with issues. There’s usually two ways, fight people the obvious way, or sneak through a back way with less enemies and more traps. There’s dialogue choices, but very rarely do they seem to have story impact. While there are minor changes and decisions sprinkled throughout the game, I would never want to replay the game just to see how it works as a brawler or caster. It’d be almost the same game with a few minor tweaks.
Relatedly, the combat is simple enough that I only get hurt if I’m being lazy. So far, as a minimum strength character I can run in, hit the enemy, then run back and not take a single hit. The combat isn’t annoying, but that’s almost because it’s so easy that it couldn’t possibly get in the way. It does make your character feel less special, and also cuts down on that normal RPG feeling of being weak at the beginning, but god-like by the late game. After 6 hours (which from what I understand is about 1/3 or 1/2 of this game) I feel like the same character, but faster.
All that being said however, there’s a few things to keep in mind that make these faults less damning than they sound. First of all, character creation and stats are so simple that even if they don’t change much, they also don’t take up much of your time. I get a level, which gives a singular skill point, then I think “yea more agility might be nice” and put it into agility. Done. While I love alt-tabbing to wikis and planning full builds in large-scale RPGs, it’s decidedly more of an excuse to explore in this game (since you get skill points via hidden objects in the world).
Also, while the different builds don’t drastically change how you handle combat or in-game decisions, they do provide enough variety to make your playthrough feel unique. There may not be wholescale mechanical shifts like the alchemy system in Morrowind, or the repair-based crafting in Fallout New Vegas, but there are rooms you can’t get into without high enough lore or lockpick. In New Vegas, if there was a locked room, they’d give you a lockpick check, a science terminal to unlock the door, and hide a key in the room for the observant types. Dread just stops and says “hey sorry, this room is for the high lore characters” and it gives the game a less “do everything” approach and more of a “do what you can” mentality.
Basically, all the stats, the numbers, the level design, all that is simplified. It’s the ideas of a 100 hour RPG trimmed down into what can fit into this smaller world. As I said, the more I play the more the flaws and limitations of how stats function in this game do come to light, but everything the game does right continues to shine brighter and brighter.
Where the simplified systems scream “don’t spend that much time on me, I’m not super important”, but there’s a different kind of freedom here. While I’ve always enjoyed games that don’t rely on objective markers for navigation, they do make sense in massive open world games as a mechanism to stop players getting stuck. The smaller world of Dread doesn’t have this issue, since you can basically run to anywhere from anywhere within a couple minutes. It’s an excellent psychological trick, a world large enough and spread out enough to feel vast, but in reality, nothing is more than a 5 minute walk away.
With this size we can not only throw out the need for quest markers, but also for fast travel (outside of one return spell, which has very limited use cases). It’s big enough that you do need to use landmarks to get around, but there are only 4 or 5 landmarks you really need to keep in your head at any time, so you really do familiarize yourself with the landscape. You start to learn the fastest way through the main town, you plan your waypoint for the return spell more carefully when you go to further parts of the map. You start to work with the world and grow attached to it. You get the satisfaction of really understanding your favorite open world RPG, but without having to do five playthroughs.
This specific kind of small freedom is less of the Skyrim “go anywhere do anything” mantra and more of a “Look around and get comfortable”. The rarity of the combat encounters, the extremely minimal focus on stats and equipment, it’s all in service to the world outside of the menus. So while I do think the game would be improved with stats that made each character feel a little more defined, this is a flaw that doesn’t have the same impact on Dread Delusion as it would on Morrowind. I said I wouldn’t replay this game to see a new build, but I would play it again to hang out more, to talk to these characters again, to see if I can figure out just a little more of the lore, to come back and say “I know this place, it’s good to be back”.
I think what I’m really trying to say is this game isn’t really an RPG with watered down mechanics… It’s a walking sim absolutely stuffed to the brim with more mechanics than we’ve ever seen. For real, the combat isn’t hard and encounters are spaced far enough away that the real puzzle is listening to people to find out where to walk next. The stats change the way that you get from one place to another slightly, but you’re really going from point A to point B, but of your own accord. In his Off-Peak review Skeeter wrote that he wished that the game didn’t use collectables to guide him, and that the dialogue and environment should do the heavy lifting. It’s great to see Skeeter getting what he wants.
I would like to review this a third time after Skeeter has finished, so we can talk more about characters and themes, but right now I don’t want to spoil anything, so this mechanics review will do. I’ll leave off this review the same way I left of yesterday’s:
I want to stop writing this review, so I can go play more Dread Delusion.
Recommend: Yes
Replay Percentage Chance: 95%
Time Played: 6 Hours
Skeeter’s Take:
Welcome back to Dread Delusion - yes, we both enjoyed it enough we wanted to keep playing it. Here we are.
This game had some weird hold on my brain and I was thinking about it all day at work.
Allow me to fill you in on my journey since yesterday:
So far, I wandered into the nearby village and met some snot-nose kid I was able to bully and indimitate:
Turns out he was the Mayor’s child - whoops! I guess that’s a good reminder to get to know someone first before you start the bullying, you never know how well connected they could be and how you could exploit their connections to your advantage! After he stopped crying and sniveling, he told me what there was to do around town and suggested I go get weighed.
I made my way to the town weigher, he asked me to step on a scale that didn’t seem attached to anything. He was able to decipher my moral compass and that I was a prisoner just based on that quick weigh-in. I had to ask him how he knew this. He explained that there was a person on the other end of this ether-linked scale who was chosen as the shining example of the Union moral standards, and gets the very neat job of… standing on the other end of a scale. This game is cool.
After being weighed and chatting the weigher up, I found out there may be some god-worshiping heathens that come out under the shadow of darkness. Thanks Weigher!
I made my way to the local shop, bought some Scryshroom tea for me and my inquisitor buddy back at the stronghold, and chatted up Nudd (prominently featured in Sam’s review yesterday). I have to say, he’s not all he’s cracked up to be. He talks a big talk about being able to be at my throat before I even drew my sword, so I slashed that silly billy several times to make him prove it:
He didn’t even flinch. Pathetic. Perhaps he just saw into the future that the player has a magical spell cast upon them by the devs to never be able to hurt a non-enemy character? Never mind, he might be next level bad-ass. Real talk, I wish I could suffer the consequences of my actions of swinging my sword like a mad man at friendly NPCs.
After invading Nudd’s space for way too long and learning some cool things about his mercenary past, I made my way back to the castle to give my friend some tea. After some awkward silences he decided he loved it - I tried a cup myself and my vision got all blurry, but I definitely didn’t see into the future.
Upon returning to the town, I rented a room from the shopkeeper, slept until night so I could go find some god-worshipers.
After a nice nap, I found this shady character skulking about at night:
I followed them and they led me to a cave with a giant skull and a giant sword driven through it (not pictured, I forgot). I had found evidence of the worshippers.
I decided to head out of town for a bit, just to explore. I killed some frog men and some eyeball creatures and found my way up to a scholar who was trying to make a self-updating map to account for the islands constantly shifting. They were also extremely allergic to mushrooms and sent to the middle of a mushroom filled land:
I moseyed around and killed a few more things, but there wasn’t much more to note - except this really badass mushroom that absorbed a dead guy or something:
That’s so neat.
Anyway, I haven’t delved into the game deep enough to really dive into the nitty gritty of how it plays. The lore and world building has just been excellent, wacky, and has a silly tone about it - it doesn’t take itself too seriously. I can say I really regret taking magic as I only have the “Go Home” spell which… well. And the “ Charm Enemy” spell which has only proved useful for freezing an enemy long enough for me to walk up and get a free smack off. I have found one wisdom lock check, and about a billion lockpick checks, which I got extremely lucky on, by the way. Also, I cannot fathom why anyone would parry or block when you can easily avoid enemy swings by taking 2 steps backward. I’m sure I’ll find some more things to complain about, because boy if there is one thing I’m good at doing - it’s complaining!
All in all, I’m really having fun with this game, and I am excited to explore the weird world and talk to more of the zany characters. Controversial opinion, but I like playing fun games. Whoo!
Recommend: Still yeah
Replay Percentage Chance: 95% - Sam might be on his 4th playthrough by the time we get back around to this.
Time Played: 3 Hours
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