I remember reading Levelord's blog about his trip to Russia back before he decided to move there permanently (what a madman), and what I found most amusing is how he said "the traffic laws here are more like suggestions" LMAO. No, Richard, they're not, it's just that nobody follows them.

In Hard Truck 2 you do have to follow the traffic laws because it is a very different game from its predecessor. Can hardly even be called a sequel. It maintains and improves the core driving mechanics and driving-related features, but is now an open-world cargo transportation simulator. In almost every aspect this is a much more polished experience with a lot more depth to its gameplay. It is inarguably a much better game, but how much you're gonna like it is dependent entirely on whether you're into this type of game. And I don't think I am.

My brother used to play a lot of truck-driving sims back in the day. This game was probably the most popular in its genre because a lot of people played it. I used to watch it more than play it myself because I found these games boring. But that in my current age gave me a misconception that they must be relaxing. What can be more relaxing that just driving long distances through beautiful countryside? That turned out to be far from truth however. In fact, I found this game kinda stressful.

So you start at a station where you can pick up one of the few delivery orders... or not, it's really up to you. But once you pick it up, it tells you "you're number 4th, hurry up!" and you find out you're in a race. That's right, every delivery is a race, and you are allowed to arrive last, but not to fail your deadline. Every order will give you something like between 5 and 35 minutes for delivery, and that's really about the difference between going to your nearest town and going to the other edge of the map.

If you arrive first, you get a bonus and a license. The license allows you to hire other drivers, so they can make deliveries and pay you a portion of their profits. I was playing an expanded edition, which isn't on Backloggd, I guess because it wasn't released in the West, and it has this mechanic which might not've been in the original, if my memory serves me right. The license is temporary and will expire in a few minutes, so you gotta find someone to hire quick. This allows you to build some passive income, which makes the game slightly less stressful. Perhaps by the end game you can hire so many people that the game actually does become relaxing.

The reason I found the game stressful is because, while it does let you not treat the deliveries as races, you still do because the bonus is way too substantial. It's hard to ignore it and drive at your own pace (especially when the game keeps telling you to hurry up). Meanwhile you have to slowdown whenever there's a radar or cops nearby, otherwise you get fined. You can contact the cops via radio and bribe them to avoid being stopped (and losing speed), but then you gotta pay more, and these guys are quite extortionist. This isn't helped by the fact you have to prevent your cargo from being damaged, so you gotta be very careful to make the turns and avoid hitting other cars. The roads rarely have any shortcuts, and, when they do, they often lead you in the opposite direction or off a cliff. The map layout mostly provides one or two linear paths between each town, but those paths are kinda snaky with a lot of very difficult turns. So in a way the game is constantly pushing you to hurry, while at the same time making you slow down a lot. And I found that the opponents can be near-impossible to outrun (at least in the beginning) because they're following the exact same linear path with about the same speed and more accuracy. In addition, you have to figure out most of the game on your own, so you end up making a lot of mistakes early on. I guess you could call this game "Soulslike."

I do believe the best aspects of the game are the management mechanics and the open world. There is a lot to explore and unlock here. I remember me and my relatives gathering around a computer when playing this game, and it was so exciting to finally be able to purchase new trucks or find secrets. I think in the original game you could eventually purchase regular cars sometime during the endgame, but in this expanded edition they're unlocked from the start. But I remember the collective elation when we first purchased a GAZelle. I don't really understand it now, but I suppose just the fact that a van was in a truck-driving game felt like some cool extra bonus. The amount and variety of cars in this game is still impressive, considering how each of them has its own unique 2D interior.

I think the real joy of this game came back then from naively spending a lot of time in that world. I have vivid memories of rain-covered windshields, autumn leaves carried by the wind, forests, rivers and canyons, and the never-ending road extending into the horizon. Back then this game felt like an adventure. Now its positive qualities only remind me of what's been lost with age, and its negative qualities stick out like a sore thumb. Still, credit where credit is due, this is a pioneer of its genre and was very advanced for its time.

P. S. The original cover art was so much better. The golden font was much more tasteful and conveyed the game's tone much better. The expanded edition though had a much more accurate depiction of what happens in the actual gameplay.

Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2022/11/06/the-beast-within-a-gabriel-knight-mystery-gabriel-knight-2-the-beast-within-1995-pc-review/

While the first Gabriel Knight wasn’t a massive success for Sierra, it did receive a lot of critical praise from both critics and adventure game fans alike, so a sequel was greenlit and put into development almost immediately, and a year and a half after the release of the first game, The Beast Within was released.

When the original Gabriel Knight was released, video games were making the transition from the 3 and a 1/2 inch floppy discs that were limited to 1.44 megabytes per disc to CDs which had up to 700 megabytes per disc, and while the original Gabriel Knight did take advantage of the new format by adding voice acting and having cutscenes with more animation, it was still clearly made for floppy discs in mind.

Released in the same year as the first Gabriel Knight, Myst and The 7th Guest were released to both critical and financial success, with Myst becoming the highest selling game at the time and became the reason to own a CD drive, along with several other games around the same time also receiving moderate success, and it really showed off the advantages that the extra space that CDs allowed by adding high quality music and sounds along with videos, and the team behind The Beast Within took notice and decided to use Full Motion Video for the game. Jane Jensen returns to pen the story for it’s sequel, which helps it be consistent in tone with the previous game.

The result of this choice lead to the game using a whopping 6 CDs, which was massive at the time. I know that doesn’t sound as impressive more than 25 years after it’s release considering that file sizes have ballooned so much that the average indie game made up by a small team could easily match it or even surpass it in file size, sometimes by accident even, but it was expensive at the time to print a game on that many discs, and a company wouldn’t normally do that unless the studio knew it was going to be a big hit, or was at least hoping that it was a big hit, or the studio making the game was being incredibly ambitious, requiring all of that extra space.

Considering that The Beast Within was being developed along with and eventually released the same year as other titles developed with a serious tone in mind such as ‘Shivers’, ‘Roberta William’s Phantasmagoria’, and the spin-off of ‘Police Quest’ titled ‘Police Quest: S.W.A.T.’, Sierra was clearly banking on their games being higher quality and more ambitious than a lot of the other games at the time to get their games flying off of shelves, with all of these tiles requiring at least two CDs to store all of their content.

Set one year after the events of the first game, Gabriel Knight has written a best-selling book loosely based on the events in the first game, titled “Voodoo Murders”. Since then, Gabriel has since moved into his late uncle’s castle, Schloss Ritter, located in Rittersberg, Germany, and has taken on the title of Schattenjager, or Shadow Hunter in English, passed down to him from his uncle. Since the events of the first game, Gabriel has been struggling to recreate the success of his previous book, with very little in the way of progress.

One night, during one of his many unsuccessful writing sessions, a group of people from the nearby town arrives at Schloss Ritter in the middle of the night, looking for the Schattenjager with a story that the daughter of one of the townsfolk being attacked and murdered by what they claim is a werewolf. After a moment of reluctance, Gabriel agrees to find the alleged werewolf for them and prevent the killing of more people.

His investigations soon lead him to a shadowy hunting club and infiltrate their ranks by leaving an impression on the person in charge of the club, Baron Von Glower, and while the other members are suspicious of them, Glower vouches for Gabriel, and both of them soon find a connection between them.

In the year that Gabriel has been living in Schloss Ritter, Grace Nakimura, Gabriel’s assistant, has been taking care of his rare book store back in New Orleans. Grace finds this frustrating, since the only communication that she has been getting from Gabriel is through letters in the mail saying that he’s making great progress with his new book and she shouldn’t worry about him and should just focus on taking care of the book store, leaving Grace frustrated that instead of being able to use her abilities as a researcher like she did in the first game by helping Gabriel investigate the Voodoo Murders, which inevitably got him success with his first book, she is relegated to taking care of a dusty old book shop that has been getting an increase in visitors in the form of new fans from Gabriel’s recently successful book.

After an encounter with a particularly annoying fan, Grace decides to temporarily close the book store to visit Gabriel and see if Gabriel is actually making as much progress as his letters say he does and goes to meet up with Gabriel in his recently inherited castle, soon finding that Gabriel had already started his investigation elsewhere, leaving Grace with the Gerde Hull, carer of the Castle that Gabriel inherited from his uncle, which Gerde had previously assisted with and potential love interest, which thankfully goes nowhere. Soon Grace is helping Gabriel with his investigation by researching werewolves as Gabriel is investigating the hunting club, with both of them communicating via mail throughout most of the game.

And just like the first game, ‘The Beast Within’ uses real world locations, history, and people for it’s story. And just like last time, this review/retrospective is going a little too long for me to talk about it, so I’ll have to make another post about it if there’s enough interest for it.

Much like the first game, this got a novelization by Jane Jenson, released in the box with the game, and expands on a lot of the details of the story. It’s hard to get a physical copy of it these days, and if you know where to look by sailing the high seas, you could probably easily track down a copy of it yourself and read it if the game’s plot has peaked your interest.

This time around instead of just playing as Gabriel like in the first game, Grace is now a fully playable character alongside Gabriel, with whole chapters dedicated to just playing as just her. While Gabriel is getting his hands dirty by getting involved with all the major characters involved with the events in the surrounding story and getting close to them, going to any location that seems linked to said characters and events, and generally getting his hands dirty, Grace is at the opposite end of the scale, with her investigating the history of werewolves and the real world history tied to what Gabriel is getting involved with.

And despite being separated for most of the game, Gabriel and Grace still keep in contact by sending each other letters to keep up with each other and to inform the other person of their own investigations. Remember when you actually had to send someone a physical letter via snail mail? Actually, a lot of people reading this would be young enough that they might think snail mail is referring to sending e-mail over a 56k modem, which is also now archaic. Oh no, my back hurts.

For most of the The Beast Within, it’s your typical point-and-click adventure game. You click something and the character moves across the screen to interact with the something that you clicked. It even comes with some helpful ways to guide you through the game if you’re having problems, such as a feature on the map screen that highlights locations that still have things to do at them. But the game is not without some problems.

Because the game is now using real world images instead of pixel art, some stuff naturally blends together where the pixel art might have been used to properly highlight something, through making something distinct or the focus of the room, where as staring at an image of a real world location might not trigger the same response since it might come cross as white noise, even if it isn’t intended. It’s never terrible since everything pretty much makes logical sense, but it can still happen to some degree.

There are also times when the game shows a short video clip to help make transitioning from one location to another smoother, but there have been a few times where I clicked to skip what I thought was a video that I had seen a thousand times before only to find out later through items either appearing, disappearing, or being combined in my inventory, or when something suddenly becomes interactive when it wasn’t before that I realized that I had clicked through an entirely new clip simply because the first moments of it were exactly the same as the other clip. It would have been helpful if the video transition was from a different angrily or at least zoomed in or out so that it would have been easier to notice that the game was signalling that I had trigger something new in the game.

In one of the sections of the game focused on Grace when she is going on a tour of multiple locations, the Neuschwanstein Castle, the Herrenchiemsee Museum, and the Wagner Museum in Chapter 4, you have to go through every single room, look at every single painting, listen to every single tour tape, and read every single plaque under every single painting, costume, and letter sent to make any progress.

As much as I loved this virtual tour of real world events and getting to see real world locations that I’m probably never going to see myself, it can become quite tedious, especially if you’ve missed something and you have absolutely no idea what it was, causing you to have to go back and go through everything again to make sure that you didn’t miss something from earlier. Thank god there was the hint button on the map screen highlighting places with stuff that you still had to do at that specific location, otherwise I would have pulled my hair out wondering exactly what I had to do.

There are also a few minor problems throughout the game, such as the audio quality seeming to change from scene to scene. Sometimes it will sound more compressed and there were a few clipping issues. There will be a few people out there who are into audio who would probably notice, but most people would probably be fine with it.

Like I mentioned in the introduction, the developers of ‘The Beast Within’ decided to jump on the Full Motion Video trend that had become big in the 90s instead of keeping the pixel art of the first game. But unlike most of the other FMV games that were coming out in the mid-90s that were using the lice action videos as a gimmick to try and get their games to fly off shelves through trend chasing, Sierra was actually trying to take advantage of FMV as a new medium to it’s fullest potential, and the effort really shone through, placing ‘The Beast Within’ above it’s competition.

Like most of the ambitious Full Motion Video games of the time, ‘The Beast Within’ uses blue screen to place their actors digitally onto sets that didn’t exist, but unlike other FMV games, a lot of the locations in this game actually existed, it’s just that actually filming in a lot of these locations or building sets would have been prohibitively expensive, and ‘The Beast Within’ was already becoming one of the more expensive video games of it’s time period.

But the one thing that they did do was sent out a few of the developers to the real world locations that were used in this game and took hundreds of images and carefully stitched them together in such a way to make the face feel like it actually took place in the real world locations seen in the game. And credit to the developers, the actually did a pretty solid job of representing the real world locations with their limited budget and time schedule.

The game features real world castles such as “Neuschwanstein Castle”, Burg Rabenstein”, and “Starnberger See”, along with several other real world locations such as the “Hellabrunn Zoo”, the “Richard Wagner Foundation” in Bayreuth, and the “Rathaus-Glockenspiel” and “Marienplat 21” in Marienplatz.

Although the games writer Jane Jensen admits that it was pretty limiting on what the characters could do, since it no longer could get away with the more heightened reality of the first game that allowed the creation of new locations where none existed.

After seeing some of the locations in YouTube videos, in images on Google, or through street view in Google Earth, all of the locations look very close to the real world counterparts, but some smudging of reality to make it work in a video game of course. If you’re a fan of the game and want a vacation, maybe you can take the “Gabriel Knight Tour” if you have the time.

This time around the cast is completely different from the first game, with none of the high-profile actors returning at all, probably due to the previously mentioned increased cost of moving from voice acting to actually filming the equivalent of several hours of live action video. That’s not to say that the actors in this game were bad by any means, but it was clear that actually hiring someone like Tim Curry would have blown the budget of the game several times over, so the developers chose authenticity over star power.

Instead of Tim as the titular Gabriel Knight, Gabriel is now played by Dean Erickson, whose biggest acting credit is this game unfortunately enough. The only other notable role that he ever got is a re-occurring bit part as a waiter for a few seasons on the TV show Fraiser. The difference between Dean and Tim is pretty obvious, as Dean doesn’t even try to mimic Tim’s performance from the original game, instead of going with a smarmy New Orleans accent Dean instead going with his native Californian accent.

Dean did state in an interview with “Adventure Classic Gaming”‘ that he didn’t even try to mimic Tim in any way since, in his own words, there was no way that he could even come close to doing an impression of Tim, so he played the character down to Earth. ‘The Beast Within’ was Dean’s last acting gig and while he did want to pursue acting at the time, he has since move onto other things and seems to have no resentment with the fact that his acting career fell through.

Although I do think that Dean did the best job that he could with this game, the fact that Gabriel now sounds like a confused surfer dude who just found out that werewolves existed throughout the whole game is amusing to me, and watching him try to pronounce German words in his natural accent just adds some unintentional comedy to some of the scenes. Also, “Surfer Dudes Vs German Werewolves” is my idea, do not steal.

This time around Grace is now appropriately played by an Asian Actress, Joanne Takahasi. Unlike Dean, I couldn’t find much about Joanne other than her appearing in a few minor roles, such as a doctor in episode 22 of season 4 of ‘Babylon 5’, which is her biggest role outside of this game. Looking her up on IMDB, the rest of her filmography seems to be dubious in quality from the looks it. Unfortunately Joanne doesn’t seem to act alongside a lot of other characters, although that’s most because of the way the story is told, but I still find it a tad disappointing. Her performance as Grace is solid and she does a pretty good job of helping the character make the transition from the art of the first game to the live action of the second game.

She hasn’t done any interviews about this game and has disappeared from the public eye, which is likely what she is probably enjoying the quiet life.

The other character who is important to the games story is Baron Friedrich Von Glower, played by Peter J. Lucas, and watching him and Dean play off each other as Glower and Gabriel as the character’s relationship developers is the highlight of the game’s story.

Peter’s biggest role outside of this game is Piotrek Kroll, from the David Lynch film ‘Inland Empire’. He also played a Russian reporter from ‘Independence Day’ and a Russian buyer from “Cradle 2 The Grave”, so he seems to have been pigeonholed as that guy you hire if you need someone to play a Russian basically. He’s mostly had bit parts throughout his career, but he still seems to be acting on and off as of writing this. He also had done some musical training along with acting and has appeared on a reality show about dancing, so he’s clearly had a well rounded career on stage and on screen

I know that the acting and special effects can be seen as pretty cheesy these days, especially since the overall quality of games has gone up in the 25 years since this game has come out and the budgets of the big budget studio games has skyrocketed, but the cutscenes in this game still hold up fairly well, clearly showing off the ambition that the developers have, regardless of the videos being small, interlaced, and having a low framerate.

‘The Beast Within’ doesn’t have the agonizing nails on a chalkboard first-year level hammed up acting or amateurish screenwriting like 95% of the games coming out at the same time. that would have been laughed out a 10-year olds school play.

I know that comes across as pretty backhanded, and I admit that it kind of is, but “The Beast Within” stands out from the rest of the FMV games of the time and is actually enjoyable the entire way through.

The few FMV games that still come out have been relegated to the indie scene and are a rarity in the modern era. Despite having internet speeds that now allow games like ‘The Beast Within’ to be downloaded or Blu-Ray discs to contain all of that footage, it’s still much easier to make assets instead of video due to the ease it can be reused throughout a game.

And while the technology to actually film them and show them in a game has significantly improved, none of them have had the budget to replicate something like ‘The Beast Within’, leaving it as something that probably won’t even be replicated ever again, leaving it feeling quite unique unless some rich millionaire somewhere has a specific interest in niche FMV games and money to burn.

While ‘The Beast Within’ doesn’t really retain much from the first game besides the characters, like the general look, the actors, and even tone in a lot of areas, going in a different direction with the FMV, it’s still a fantastic follow up to ‘Sins of the Fathers’. I’m pretty sure in the 25+ years since it’s first release, fans have found much to appreciate about it, and since it’s initial release it has become a beloved cult classic and I would wholly recommend it to any adventure game fans.

There has long been a debate about whether or not video games are art. And while this question may seem offensive to some gamers, I do understand where it comes from. Does art have to say something? Does art have to make you feel something? It's hard to define exactly what art is, but I don't think games like the thirty-fifth iteration of Assassin's Creed or Call of Duty quite make the cut. To me, a lot of games are more akin to going bowling or taking a ride on a rollercoaster in that they are fun and even memorable at times, but serve more as an entertaining way to pass the time than a piece of art - and that's totally fine. Outer Wilds is a different story however - Outer Wilds, without question, is art and also one of the best games I've ever played.

Outer Wilds explores the transience of life on many wildly creative levels. In Outer Wilds you are stuck in a time loop in which every cycle ends in you or the entire universe dying. This theme of fleeting existence is nailed home further in the melancholy yet hopeful ending in which even after figuring out all the secrets of the system you are in, after dying hundreds of times, after learning everything the Nomai have to teach, and making the perilous journey to the eye of the universe you find out that the universe will end regardless - your hard work has only saved you from the dreaded time loop and this time, when you die you won't wake up at that all too familiar campfire. The upshot of this otherwise existential dread fueling finale being that you get to say goodbye to all the friends you've made along the way and later get to see life beginning anew albeit sans you. The thematic cherry on top is that Outer Wilds is designed in such a way that knowledge of the game is the only thing holding you back from completing it - so much like life, you can only truly experience this masterpiece once.

I am so glad I finally beat this game.

Funnily enough, Dark Souls was a game I originally tried beating when I was 11 back in the Xbox 360 days, exclusively because I kept hearing how good the game was. I absolutely hated it back then, and never was able to truly understand the formula until I played Bloodborne years later. Since then, I have had revisiting this game on my to-do list for years. I am so glad I did.

Without a shadow of a doubt, Dark Souls is one of the most influential games of the last 2 decades and it is easy to see why. The world and combat flow together so elegantly in the first half of the game, and there are so many special moments of both pure joy and intense frustration. The highlight had to be Sens Fortress, which I described to my friend as the "ACME headquarters." Its an area that is designed to be frustrating and to kill you, but it does so in such a comedically slanted way that you cant help but respect and enjoy it. The moment I stepped on an elevator for two long and it crushed me against ceiling spikes, I knew this game was special.

The Artorias DLC was easily the highlight of the game for me, and it has elevated itself to one of my favorite sections in any game of the franchise. Artorias, Manus, Sanctuary Guardian, and Kalameet are all incredible fights, and it feels like the moment where From learned that they could push the difficulty of the fights even further. The visual design of this DLC was stellar as well, with every area looking absolutely gorgeous. The story and lore were also incredibly engaging, giving me characters that I actually gave a damn about. However, the standout element was the sound design. I was consistently blown away by how great the Abyss and enemies sounded in this DLC, and it was a massive step above the rest of the game.

The issues I have with DS1 aren't very unique though. Post Anor Londo does have some highlights for me like Seath's Library and New Londo Ruins, but there are WAY too many absolutely awful areas like Tomb of the Giants and Lost Izalith that it completely ruins the pacing of the game. I also found that most of the areas in the game were way too short, and that I absolutely would have taken less overall areas if it meant that some areas like Anor Londo and Sens Fortress were expanded upon.

I also found some of the bosses to be way too easy. Outside of the Artorias fights, there weren't really any that gave me any real trouble. Even known bastards like Capra Demon and O&S were way too basic to be seen as a real challenge. This is a strange complaint though mainly because its exclusively due to how the genre has developed over time. Nowadays compared to certain bosses in Elden Ring and Bloodborne, these are a cakewalk. But back then, when people werent really familiar with this type of game, these were some of the hardest fights you could face in a game. I still wish they were harder though.

Dark Souls is an absolutely incredible game, even though I really do feel it falls short in its 2nd half. But even with some of the dogshit areas, you cant help but respect this game. It and Demon's Souls essentially created a whole new genre, and that can not be undervalued. If it had stuck that landing, I could have easily seen this being up there as one of my favorites of all time.

As it is now though, I am content with saying that I had an absolute blast with DS1.....even though the Crystal Caves are complete fucking horeseshit OH MY GOD DELETE THAT FUCKING AREA

It's a good sign for the year when I start off with a game that has quickly become one of my favorites of all time.

Easily the best story ever put into a game. It truly enthralled me like no other game. I cant even put into words how much I loved it. I usually write a couple paragraphs about my thoughts of the game as a whole, but there is way too much I could gush about.

All Ill say is this, it made me feel every emotion in the book. True joy, sadness, disgust, heartbreak, and even existentialism. It is a masterpiece of a game.

I would die for Kim Kitsuragi and Lenval Brown could narrate my entire life and I would be eternally happy.

Pyschonauts holds up exceedingly well for a PS2 game. Even if graphically it shows its age, in gameplay it functions as well as any modern title should. There's very little of the jank that you sometimes find when going back to older eras of gaming.

Each level is an absolute blast and also a completely unique idea. Not just unique for the game, but unique for everything. There's nothing out there quite like the ideas present in Psychonauts. Each of the ten levels is distinct in both gameplay, visual setting and story.

The story is also a joy to experience. It's childish, yes, but with a very distinct charm that makes it appealing to almost anyone, I would say. Any story which sees you dealing into the mind of a paranoid schizophrenic milkman to solve a conspiracy drama has to receive a due amount of credit for its creativity if nothing else.

This is, and I swear I don't mean it pejoratively, a game for teenagers. To truly get the most of it, it asks you to 1) have the kind of patience that a large amount of free time affords you and 2) be young enough that you still find transgressive art relatively novel. These two design philosophies, repetition and transgression, work symbiotically: the cruelty of its mechanics buttresses the profoundly unpleasant aesthetic; your willingness to dive back in after repeated failure is contingent on your interest in whatever fucked up thing Haverinen can throw at you next.

For me, the game's disrespect of my time compromised the pleasures of its dark fantasy in about five hours, after I got fingerfucked to death a second time by the Harvestman. After that point, my eyes glazed over and everything started to look like mechanics to me. Every nail-biting coin flip and combat was reduced to a question of whether or not I was going to lose another twenty minutes of my precious life, and although I had previously respected the internet's insistence on playing blind, I fired up the wiki.

After another five hours of noble struggle, I realized that I was not strong enough to defeat the endgame bosses and hung it up. Maybe in the future I'll start another run, wiser and luckier, and achieve a better result. Unsatisfying? Was I filtered? Perhaps (and yes), but frankly the game is not deep enough to justify digging beyond its superficial "pleasures." It's a whole lot of lore and not much narrative ambition, an excuse to create a self-perpetuating misery engine for the player and the characters alike. The dead horse you can beat in the very first screen of the game is unfortunately more symbolic than it was meant to be.

I still admire the ferocity of its vision, its approach to the roguelike subgenre, and the unusual synthesis of its (admittedly surface-level) influences. I'll probably pick up Termina when it's on sale for $5 or so.

From wikipedia:
"During development, the game's story was originally about a character trapped in a dungeon by a wizard. After a few years of production, the project lead felt uninspired by it, and rewrote it into a love story."

From me:
Tech bros cannot write love stories to save their fucking lives. Their lives are already basically about being a wizard trapping people into dungeons of conversation. That'd be a more honest impulse to explore.