After seeing this game grow popular (mostly for controversial reasons) on twitter due to the nature of some of the content of the game that’s discussed throughout I felt an extreme compulsion to check it out as I had to feel that there must’ve been something more to it, like that something this dark with this much effort put into it couldn’t simply be only edgy, right? There had to be something more to it, right?

This game is bad. It’s bad, and it’s not just because it’s an incestuous game. It’s bad because of how poorly this topic is handled, how badly written both its narrative and dialogue is, how honestly boring it is, and how, outside of its art, it has very little going for it. I’m able to try and see what the author was trying to do with this, but if they wanted to depict deeply problematic things like incest properly, the approach that was taken is a horrible one that never decides whether it wants to be comedic or serious, and loses at both, leaving it feeling like a gross game made for the sake of fulfilling a fetish and nothing else.

To start: as stated before, the topics the game attempts to depict are either never taken seriously enough or are expected to be taken seriously very randomly, with constant jokes about Andrew and Ashely’s relationship being used as ways to make ‘funny sex between siblings joke’ rather than being shown as the relationship where Ashely holds extreme emotional power over Andrew that the game shoots for at certain points. This kind of jarring separation leaves the characters never seeming to have any moments to define them between each other, and each possible moment being used as fuel for poorly written humor. The best example I can think of this is during chapter 2 when Ashely wakes Andrew up on the couch to talk, and their Mother comes in. Andrew’s mother attempts to talk to Andrew about, what seems to be, something explaining how their situation ended up being the way it was. The implication, at least, seems to be that Ashely’s manipulative and parasitic personality is part of the reason that Andrew’s mom wanted to talk to him alone, and likely to discuss and have a dialogue about (how as she states later) how horrible Ashley is and give insight into more of their past and situation, but is interrupted due to Ashely’s presence. Rather than it being taken as a sentiment for Ashely being a literal leech on Andy and the situation being taken as seriously in a way where Ashely quite literally is always attached to Andy without him really wanting it, it’s played off as a blowjob joke and moves on completely. Moments like this where any buildup for these two characters to be established as anything more than vehicles for situations for jokes about ‘woah, isn’t this soooo taboo??’ are thrown away are constantly, with other moments like Ashely’s constant sexual harassment being no more than minor annoyances to Andrew rather than any actual point for him to stand against her and are used constantly as ways to make the audience either hard or go “woahhh that’s so weird haha!!!” and completely muddy any of the points the game tries to make about their relationship to the point that while you can clearly see the attempts to make a proper depiction about Ashley’s abusive nature, it never holds anything simply due to how those few moments are thrown away for bad jokes.

Other criticism i’ve seen a lot are about how things like cannibalism are shown as bad things, but the incest isn’t, and while it’s implied it is due to how Ashley is not only the obvious perpetrator, but is also clearly an evil person, the things mentioned before make it hardly seem like an attempt to properly depict these things, and the points about it being muddied hold strong entirely because of it. When the problematic topic at hand 80% of the time is jokes, you can’t also expect me to take it seriously when it’s tried to be depicted in a heavy manor for that 20% of the time. It’s like if Miura for Berserk made constant jokes and one-liners about the s/a that Guts and Casca experienced but also expected you to care when it came to moments that mattered.
Hugely, the game has no clue what kind of tone it wants and is all over the place, with, most notably, the artstyle not helping. While the art is, yes, good, only helps to push the less serious parts of the game and completely alienate the serious tone the game tries to have. On top of this, the pacing doesn’t give the game any credit either, with the time both Andy and Ashely spending indoors being not only hardly depicted but also ending very shortly, leaving the argument of “what spending so long in isolation can push people to” not holding up for the incestuous parts at all, only really making the cannibalism aspect a real point of discussion and really not helping push the idea that the two had some kind of crazy mental breaking point to make them love each other in a long quarantine, especially with Ashely’s motivations for being the way she is stemming from childhood and hold almost zero ground and are almost random-feeling outside of her just being in love with Andy because she’s ‘just like that and always has been’. There’s basically zero grounds and buildup for any of the things to be taken as actual development between the two, with their time in their apartment only taking up roughly 40 minutes of playtime and mostly consisting of cannibalizing someone. It furthers the problems of no setup but expected payoff, where something as problematic as incest is instantly shot into the players faces and expected to be taken seriously or taken as a real point of development. It’s unexplainable both on the implication the two have been through difficult shit and with the actual evidence of Ashely being weird, again, outside of her tendency to just be overly attached to Andy. Her relationship and love for him is just super unexplainable especially considering how Andy doesn’t reciprocate. Even if it would be something explainable in chapters 3 onwards, the game would be pretending that those things exist now to explain why they’re happening, and just leaves me confused as to why Ashely is the way she is. It’s weird to have a mystery like this exist for something that’s at the forefront of the game that just leads to the author being someone inserting a weird fetish into the game, consistently pushing the idea that the problematic theme of incest is something there that, in it’s entirety, cannot be taken seriously. This point especially makes the game worse if there’s NEVER an explanation at all, meaning that all Ashely is is an overly attached incestuous sister. Relating back to the moments in the game that are very minimal in amount, the relationship the two develop can never decide if it wants to be romantic or tense, with there being seemingly constant random moments where the two want to cuddle and maybe kiss with a moment of Andy wanted to cut Ashely’s neck or Andy feeling clearly directly against what Ashely wants happening immediately after and further the muddied tone of not only the game, but their relationship in total, where despite it having paths, seemingly never showing how the path where Andy’s relationship with Ashely becomes more tense and angry actually affects their dialogue, with the key moments mattering in those routes being extremely exclusive to very specific moments and being completely unrepresented otherwise. An example of this I can think of is when Andy is forced by Ashely to make a plan to kill their parents before going to bed and is extremely upset with her. Afterwords, however, when he’s woken up, he seemingly completely forgets that he’s mad and conflicted with her and just openly accepts her and embraces her - ignoring any of the other things about her he’s conflicted with, only to immediately go back to disliking her once the actual gameplay starts up again. It’s a constant up and down of inconsistency that never ends and leaves Andy just constantly changing for no reason? If he’s implied to be completely emotionally manipulated by Ashely and do whatever, why is that held completely true at some points but completely not at others? It just never helps the stacking list of issues with the game’s writing and what it’s trying to do. On top of this, no time is built for any horror elements either, with the game just feeling like a weird mix between an rpg maker-horror influenced game and a silly, overly edgy one leading to an extremely indecisive feeling experience that can’t decide what it wants to be.

I think the best way I can describe the game with its flaws is that in its attempts to tackle important and problematic ideas it simply comes off as edgy garbage due to how lightly the game handles it’s issues on top of it expecting you to take them seriously - and if the game doesn’t want you to take it seriously or take any of the points it tries to make with honesty, or even try to care about character growth or development, then it simply defaults into being just literal edgy content that chooses not to care about anything for the sake of making bad incest jokes. These types of moments mixed in with attempts to depict a serious, actual toxic relationship not only disarm a reader but, again, further alienate anyone resonating with the point, as the manipulation, leading to incestuous moments, constantly is played for jokes rather than being taken seriously. The damage the lack of care that the problematic parts of the game have rings to disarm and disregard every other part of the game considering the antithesis of both characters being the way they are is what causes them to act the way they do with that act, once again, being pointlessly used as a funny moment and completely dismantles everything it builds up. Incest isn’t the only thing played this way, but especially how things like Cannibalism are played to be funny around 40% of the time, with moments such as the first person dead and the thought of eating him being hardly rejected by someone like Andy and how he struggles with the idea of cannibalism being very quickly thrown away for the sake of Ashely poking fun at the idea that he’s eating people now. Just because the game has a dream section where he’s confronted with a person he’s cannibalized doesn’t make him developed because of it. It’s not deep writing representative of anything, it’s just another thing to be mentioned for a short minute every 20 minutes to claim he’s “changing as a person” then played off for another 20 for silly laughs alongside other things like siblings having sex.

Another thing too - the dialogue. It’s pretty badly written where each time Ashely speaks it’s entirely expected for her to say something weirdly sexual towards her brother or be a nuisance and the response from Andy to be “ugh. You’re so weird and gross!!!” This expectation was fulfilled almost every time and each line of dialogue not only never advancing the characters but always being worded in an extremely cringe and unfunny way. Similarly, every joke the game throws falls almost completely flat (which is a lot of jokes) and leads to the further muddying of the overall tone and feeling the gamer goes for, furthering how flat the game can feel. Adding onto this, even if you choose the direct ‘no incest route’ Ashely never stops sexually harassing Andy throughout every point and constantly ruins the dialogue more.

Smaller notes are repetitive music and barely interesting gameplay, but not only are those less important, they distract from the elephant in the room of the writing being barely passable at best and downright offensive to what it means to tell a story delving in problematic themes.

In the end, that’s all it really is, though. The game’s not bad because it has incest. It’s bad because of a shallow use of problematic themes to pretend that it’s ‘actually saying something, guys!’ rather than just being a bad fetish game with a good artstyle. It’s extremely disappointing considering how every single type of important moment attempted to be tacked always falls apart because of the various things I mentioned, whether it’s the weird shifts in what it’s trying to do that make the game hard to take serious despite it’s serious topics, whether it’s the poorly written dialogue and jokes that cause every moment to not only fall flat just because they’re played as jokes, but specifically because they’re bad jokes, whether it’s the lack of buildup to give characters reasons to be the way they are, whether it’s the over-use of problematic themes for gags, whether it’s the ignorance of what could be important moments for the sake of silly gags, or whether it’s the lack of commitment to making the characters act in accordance to events that happen consistently, the game clearly tries to be something and makes attempts at telling a story with deeply developed characters but constantly falls flat because it can never stick to anything.

Maybe i'm not supposed to look into it this deeply. Maybe it's just supposed to be a fetish game. I dunno, but it's not good regardless.

this game makes you feel so fucking cool and Corvo is awesome
every level and tool works so well together with a visual style that still holds up after 11 years with enthralling environments and a meaningful impact in the world you're playing in really makes you understand why this game is so iconic and beloved. I don't think a game has made me ever immersed me in this way, where everything that Corvo is is you with the decisions and choices you make. Even with as few levels as it has each one has such raw depth that makes them incredibly fun to move around it that I don't think i'd want anything else.

Very excited to play the second game! a replay is for sure in order; Def in my top 20