Having failed in just about every way imaginable to make a good game with The Nomad Soul, David Cage realized the true meaning of the words "The only way to win the game is to not play". How this translates into Indigo Prophecy is an experience that is more of a suggestion of interactive storytelling which defines "interaction" into the most patronizingly condescending gameplay imaginable. Only David Cage can design a videogame whose primary method of interaction is Simon fucking Says.

Regardless, I may be inclined to agree with the design practices of Indigo Prophecy if this "minimalistic" gameplay method was in service of complex, multi-faceted, and masterful storytelling. But of course, Indigo Prophecy fails at that too, but perhaps the fact that it fails so spectacularly is what makes the game ironically entertaining as a result. The beginning hours are a slog of Cage's usually offensive portrayals of sex, race and violence combined with convoluted storytelling meant to give the impression of depth by means of confusion more than complexity.

But, after a glorious moment of what I can only describe as "enlightenment" the game makes a hard switch into stupendously over-the-top action schlock that is so non-sensical and so emotionally charged that it circles back into being a fun time, though if only because it's easier to laugh at the game than alongside it.

Go ahead, play it with a few friends and see what I mean. You may not regret it. Or just don't play it at all.

Many movies are described as being "so bad they're good", but that's much more rare for a video game. As an enjoyer of both I think that has to do with games being fairly long and interactive. The Video Gamer can't just sit back and enjoy the ride – they must engage with the mechanics. It can be difficult to extract any fun out of whatever is "so bad it's good" about a game if the moment to moment interaction with its systems is unenjoyable. Fahrenheit, though, is the moment David Cage realized he doesn't actually want to make video games – he wants to make movies.

The tutorial takes place at a movie set with an appearance from Mr. Cage himself, saying he's the director of the game and guiding you through the basic controls. There's an in-game news headline saying director David Cage has won an Oscar for the latest entry in his movie trilogy. The top option in the main menu isn't even "New Game", it's "New Movie".

Fahrenheit still meets the minimum of interactivity to qualify as a game. Even if most of that is just basic adventure game use-item-on-thing-puzzles and dialogue choices. The actually challenging gameplay sections usually make the player literally play Simon (like, the thing where you just repeat a sequence of colored buttons) to represent whatever action is going on. The other mode of active gameplay is stealth sections where getting spotted leads to an instant fail. I wish those were also just Simon.

The real joy is seeing Mr. Aspiring Hollywood Director David "David Cage" De Gruttola absolutely COOKING with the story for the last time in his career. It's a goofy 8 hour B-movie that keeps jumping increasingly larger and more toothy sharks until it's unrecognizable from the relatively subdued opening moments. Every single time you think it's peaked it surprises you 30 minutes later with some fresh new bullshit. Kino.

I think this might just be the dumbest game I have ever played.

Starting off with a now legendary opening, where as Lucas Kane you need to cover up a murder you unwillingly committed in a diner restroom, the game effectively immerses you in its story. The chosen setting, a snow covered New York, plays really well with the potentially supernatural murder mystery the game seems to be going for in the beginning. I also really enjoyed the fact that you get to control both the perpetrator and the two policemen chasing him (a plot device that would return in Quantic Dream’s later games). And that’s pretty much everything positive I can say about ‘Fahrenheit’.

Before I delve deeper into the disastrous plot (especially in the second half of the game), let me quickly go over the ‘gameplay’ side of things. This is pretty much a QTE-fest with very little actual interaction available to players. Many of those button mashing sequences are ridiculously long (vide Lucas’ visions), and in some cases they appear in places they have no business being in. Why are we forced to do quick time events during an interrogation? Is it because otherwise the players would realize how shallow and poorly written this scene is? There’s also a level where we’re forced to do a painfully slow QTE sequence over a character delivering lengthy exposition. What is the purpose of this? Were the writers afraid that otherwise the players would get bored and not pay attention? If so, I hope it was caused by the writers’ awareness of the poor quality of their work rather than lack of faith in the players’ ability to focus on the game when they’re not actively mashing buttons like a maniac.

The controls are horrible and often I’d get frustrated with the controlled character for going in the total opposite direction I needed them to go in. There’s a dubious lives system that I see no other reason for being here than because it’s something that apparently should be in a video game (even though this video game tries desperately to fool you into thinking it’s more of an interactive movie). There’s also a mood meter affected by the characters’ actions and it also plays no important role in the game (other than sometimes reaching a failstate and retrying the scene). It’s just a trick to give players an illusion that what they do has some bearing on the story (oh, you’re depressed because you killed an innocent bystander? Here’s a cup of coffee, that’s +10 to mood, chin up!). You get some bonus points for ‘exploring’, which is not difficult as the levels are rather tiny and easy to navigate. There’s no other point to exploration, though, unless you enjoy opening and closing empty drawers.

Every little action - opening a drawer, then closing it, opening a door, climbing up or down a pipe or wall - is needlessly long due to the creators’ choice to have the player move the right analog stick rather than simply press a button. At times it was simply infuriating, especially in the many sections where you’re working under a time constraint. Also, the two sections with Carla walking around the police archive and the psych ward where she needs to hold her breath are simply annoying.

Returning to the story, the game takes some time to completely jump the shark, but even before it does there are a lot of serious problems with the writing. The dialogue is mostly terrible and very cliched, the characters are either a wet blanket (Lucas), a pretty offensive stereotype (Tyler) or a woman with big tits that gets undressed by the devs on numerous occasions (Carla). Most NPCs show up only for short episodes and they’re not given too much time to be developed properly. The worst part, however, is that the characters seem like total idiots. They take forever to reach the most obvious conclusions or make decisions so baffling that they would surely cause a collective burst of laughter in a movie theater. An old cop didn’t arrest a killer on the loose because he saved a kid from drowning?! Carla, a detective with years of experience, falls without a single question for Lucas’ story about ancient prophecies and secret societies?!

Another thing: the game throws in so many different inspirations from (or sometimes even blatantly copies) famous movies and tropes that it’s truly hard to keep track. We’ve got a scary psychiatric hospital, a serial killer in NYC, the chosen child who was born to save the world, The Matrix-like combat scenes with characters flying all over the city, a noir crime story, Mayan beliefs, secret military bases, alien artifacts, secret societies, the apocalypse, premonitions, ancient prophecies, rogue AIs trying to take over the world, brain controlling microchips. This is a total mess and there isn’t a writer that’d make anything coherent out of this. It seriously feels like a parody, but I have a suspicion it isn’t one, simply because Quantic Dream lack the self-awareness required. If this was turned into a movie or a series, its only hope for any relevance would be reaching a cult classic status a la ‘The Room’. You can’t even use the argument that player’s choices force them down these odd paths as until the very end of the game there aren’t any choices affecting the outcome - all this talk about ‘giving players ability to choose their story’ is just a ruse, always has been.

Fuck this game for wasting 10 hours of my life.

Sony looked at this game and was like "Yeah, we can let this team make more/bigger/better titles like this."

And I am STOKED they did, but oh boy, I don't understand why.

Truly an applicable "so bad it's good" game. I wish the controls still weren't all funky on the remaster.

По началу игра показалась устаревшей в отношении графики и игровых механик. Но это пилотный проект легендарного Дэвида Кейджа и на этом продукте он набивал свои первые шишки, поэтому считаю не заслужено занижать баллы за некоторые погрешности. Стоит учитывать тот год, когда эта игра была сделана. Для того времени, это был не то что прорыв в игровой индустрии, это был проект, опережающий игры на десятки лет вперёд. К сюжету нет никаких нареканий. Хорошо проработанный и качественно написанный сценарий. Персонажи чувствуются, события нагнетают, огорчают, радуют, улыбают, вводят в депрессию.

Преклоняюсь пред тобой, легенда интерактивного кинца

Guilty pleasure.

É cheio de reviravoltas doidas, viradas de roteiro excêntricas e sexualização desnecessária. Dito isso, na época que joguei pela primeira vez no PC, me surpreendi com a árvore de diálogos e a ideia do jogo agir como um filme interativo guiado pelo que você faz. Era inovador pra época e o remaster deu uma boa revivida na cor e na textura no geral pra quem quiser conferir por curiosidade. Não recomendo pra quem não gosta de coisas que são não-intencionalmente engraçadas por se levar a sério demais.

Me: Hmm, I'm going to play this old David Cage game. Can't be that bad.
David Cage: Sex QTE
Me: what
David Cage: Push the analog stick to FUCK

The thing about playing Quantic Dream stuff in 2024 is that we know it's not going to go well. Several years ago, it was possible to have a generous interpretation of David Cage's works by assuming he was just an eccentric man who adored movies and who was trying to make this new brand of adventure games work. QD's games are different from the norm, even if their quality is inconsistent and their content, often questionable. And yes, Cage does have a history of displaying an inflated ego in public, but one could excuse that as hustle from a person who has to confidently sell unusual ideas.

Of course, since the Quantic Dream lawsuits, looking at things kindly like that has gone from hard to impossible. It now is publicly known that the company is a cesspool, that its founders are crooks ("I'm not under oath, so can I lie?" is more unforgettable than any line in a QD game) and that the auteur at the center of it all is by no means a misunderstood genius, but a bigot and a jackass. Well, alleged bigot and jackass, one might say, as many of the cases are still on-going, but the problem is, the mere knowledge of what went on during those trials informs the consumption of the works and prevents any sort of charitable interpretation.

Why am I saying all this? Because Indigo Prophecy desperately needed a charitable interpretation.

Its opening is deceptively strong: The bathroom at a diner. A man inside the stall, shaking. Possessed by a cloaked figure. He gets up, opens the stall door. An older man, washing his hands. Doesn't see the first man walk up behind him. He falls to the ground and is stabbed, again and again. The murderer raises his head, his task done, and comes to his senses. His name is Lucas Kayne, and he will need the player's help in order to flee the scene without being caught.

Lucas is not the only playable character, however, as once he is home free, we cut to detectives Carla Valenti and Tyler Miles, who arrive at the scene of the crime to investigate the gruesome murder. These scenes very quickly and effectively establish a central mystery as well as a (criminally underused) cat-and-mouse game that our protagonists are about to play. There's tension and intrigue to work with, backed by surprisingly good voice acting for a game of its time, as well as an exceptional orchestral score by the late Angelo Badalamenti of all people.

All of which is wasted by the most worthless vision, starting with the thoroughly incompetent writing. Anyone who's read reviews for Indigo Prophecy has probably heard that the game falls off during the last third, and it must be clarified that those reviewers are overselling the story: in truth, the script's quality begins to decay almost immediately after the opening, completely jumping the shark by the halfway point. The final third is simply when time and money started to run out and plot points had to be compressed, but no investors or sequels could ever have saved such drivel.

To call the writing amateurish would be hyping it up: Indigo Prophecy is what one would get if they took an 11-year-old boy, took him to watch some of IMDB's top rated films, then asked him to pen his own movie. The result would likely be a jumble of incongruent themes and lousy plot devices, much like this one: Would you like a detective story, a supernatural one, or sci-fi? How about all three? Because IP is a game about mayans, AI, interdimensional bugs, the Force, the military, Dragon Ball fighting, visions, racist stereotypes, the Illuminati, getting impregnated by the undead, alien tech, secret societies of homeless people, irradiating the undead baby with the alien tech...

And that's not even mentioning the awkward rip-offs of famous and successful films: Silence of the Lambs, The Matrix, you'll know it when you see it. However, it's the power fantasy at the core of it is the most embarassing: Lucas Kayne is our 11-year-old's OC, a mediocre man at first that becomes The Chosen One, the almighty saviour of humanity, becoming ever more powerful in a barrage of scenes of escalating absurdity. Of course, he also gets to sleep with all the women, who for some reason find him irresistible.

Carla and Tyler, on the other hand, while initially promising to replicate the buddy cop dynamic from old police movies, become almost set dressing by the halfway point. Carla, in particular, has her personality and motivations entirely wiped by the end of the story in order to achieve a conclusion that's entirely centered on Lucas. There are three endings, entirely decided by the player's performance in the last scene, but whichever one the player gets, the story ends on an egregious note of Heavy Rain-grade bullcrap, and they're not even allowed the pleasure of an ending where everyone dies.

Speaking of Heavy Rain, as painful as it is to give any kind of credit to that game, Indigo Prophecy is the predecessor and it shows. The whole QTE gameplay was still getting figured out, and most of the scenes use this Genius-style UI that has you moving the analog sticks in the directions it shows to pass each scene. That it's garish is a given, but it's the nonstop prompts having nothing to do with the action onscreen that stings. In later games, there's far less inputs to perform and they all have something to do with the action and/or motion going on in the screen, fostering some sort of connection while allowing the player to watch what's happening.

Then again, early on in IP, you do push the analog stick forward over and over to make Lucas thrust into a woman, so maybe less connection can be good in some situations. It might sound like I'm making a big deal out of this, but it goes back to the idea of interpreting things charitably. Indigo Prophecy could maybe be written off as a camp classic if some credence could be given to its creators. Instead, the sex minigame reads as childish; the numerous movie rip-offs, "Citizen Cage" posters and "New Movie" instead of "New Game" in the main menu all register as pretentious slop; and the questionable depictions of race, gender and mental illness are perceived as intentional and heartfelt.

If anything, the fact that Quantic Dream got any investors for its later games after delivering this rubbish is a sign that, at the very least, they have some fierce negotiators among them. As a consumer, however, unless you need something cheap to point at and laugh for about five hours, then walk away from with fewer brain cells than you started with, Indigo Prophecy is an easy pass.

When the game first released back in 2005, I'm pretty well sure there was nothing like it at the time, this is the beginning of the David Cage formula for the world to see. Playing it, after play Heavy Rain and Beyond Two Souls. This game aged like milk honestly, the controls sucked; only utilizing the joysticks and the bumpers for gameplay might seem pretty innovative, but, the thing is, YOU HAVE at least 12 other buttons to use for gameplay other than those 4. The Joystick QTE-Simon-says type mini-game was not as bad as the ball busting bumper mashing one, that one was physically painful at times. The story was fucking bat-shit insane, but, I guess that's David Cage writing for you. Overall, this is not his best work, honestly.

honestly, not a terrible game. but if i were to look back at the +7 hours i spent on this game, i wouldn't recommend anyone to play it. watch the matrix trilogy instead, about the same amount of time and it's way more rewarding. also, david cage has to chill, dude thinks he is the one and only Game Director in existence. he even compared himself to citizen kane in this game ffs.

fahrenheit indigo prophecy has a decent first half, things are well-paced enough to keep you hooked. but the second half is just rushed to the point of making all the stakes in the narrative laughable. you simply don't care about what's happening anymore since the narrative keeps throwing exposition after exposition and so many different threads to the narrative that it feels like cage couldn't make a decision so he put everything in. plus the carla and lucas romance/sex scene was literally just thrown there for that HOT GAMER MOMENT (probably what cage had in mind).

oh yes, the quick-time events are bad, but that's just david cage games.

It was a game with a very interesting story, the only disturbing thing was the quick time events that were kind of in front of you, but considering that it's a game from 2005, let's say I forgive it a little. The game follows Lucas, a man who was possessed and killed someone in the bathroom while you try to unravel the mystery, who was possessed? why? and many other questions that will be answered by the end of the game, you also control two policemen who are trying to catch Lucas, meaning you too. Very atmospheric game and a very good story. Unfortunately, it feels like an old game because the mechanics haven't aged very well, and it takes a while to get used to this style of quick-time events, and it's very annoying because those 2 wheels are right in front of you. I recommend that it be played with a controller, with the keyboard I assume that it is a terrible control experience.