You're in a car, teetering on the edge of a cliff, while you ruminate on life with a talking deer... and yet somehow this is not engaging.

If you've never taken the time to think about basic philosophy there may be something to be gained by playing Far From Noise, but everything presented is so surface level that it ends up feeling shallow and unsatisfying. A conversation about epistemology goes no deeper than "it's impossible to tell if you are hallucinating so you have to assume the talking deer must be real". Thoughts like this and "it's freeing to know that the world continues to exist after I die" are conclusions I feel most people come to when they're thirteen years old, so for them to be presented here as revelatory is baffling to me. This isn't helped by listing the philosophers this game was "inspired by" in the credits.

Despite the intention of this game to be slow and contemplative, even its total time of just under two hours outstays its welcome. It's relaxing and I was ready to settle in for some serious thinking, but Far from Noise just had nothing new to say.

And honestly, if a talking deer came to my car hanging precariously off a cliff and decided to read a few poems to me, I think I would shift my weight forward.