In its first week, 1000xResist has received near unanimous praise for its story. I am not one of those people. I wanted to make clear what this is on the surface as a caveat for those sucked in by hype but aren’t primed for this sort of experience, which at points was the only thing keeping me going (besides the fantastic somber music).
The prose often consists of punchy psuedo-poetic labyrinthine conversations. I’d say Disco Elysium has poisoned the well here in terms of how its influence has conditioned gamers to treat cryptic rambling as the gold standard for writing in games. I think there was a finesse to the writing in Disco Elysium that made me believe in it regardless of my inability to latch onto it emotionally or intellectually but I must say I tend to feel dead inside by its imitators. This applies to the work of Hideo Kojima and Yoko Taro as well, whose work is similarly convoluted, but have a playfulness about them I find intoxicating regardless. 1000xResist takes itself far too seriously to develop much of a personality of its own, which leads me to a compounding issue here- the clones.
I think using clones is an excellent idea for a more budgeted title like this (fewer voice actors, fewer models) but it’s detrimental to understanding a complicated story when its singular voice actor is talking to herself in limited shades of aloof and tired. It’s a great gear to be stuck in for a sci-fi story I guess but the emotional range is lacking and the supporting voice talent isn’t doing nearly enough to inject the story with much flavour. Differentiation is needed in a narrative with so many twists and turns- because they were all technically the same people, emotionally I treated them as such. I didn’t care. I didn’t understand the stakes. My plot comprehension is pretty poor on the whole, so calling me out on that is fair, but the acting and writing is actively undermining clarity and I do see that as an underlying flaw.
The gameplay is fine. I like relaxing story-driven games without combat. But let’s talk about its derivative elements. If you’ve played your fair share of games in the past 10 years you’re probably well-acquainted with “vision quest” segments that place you in a hazy psychedelic space with oversized familiar objects untethered by gravity as symbolic waypoints for the fractured psychology of a character’s emotional distress. I am unbelievably tired of this trope, and 1000xResist makes an entire mechanic out of it. TBH it actually pissed me off less in this case just because of its commitment to the bit, but when trying to understand the story in tandem with its other quirks, there’s just layers and layers of inception here I don’t care to sift through.
Again- just my caveats! If you’re predisposed to enjoying these kinds of bendy sci-fi stories, I’m happy you’ll get a lot out of this. Not for me. To give it marginal credit, the prose itself never got anywhere near as bad as the “dumpster Jiao” line in chapter one. There is an overall maturity here I do appreciate despite my objections.
The prose often consists of punchy psuedo-poetic labyrinthine conversations. I’d say Disco Elysium has poisoned the well here in terms of how its influence has conditioned gamers to treat cryptic rambling as the gold standard for writing in games. I think there was a finesse to the writing in Disco Elysium that made me believe in it regardless of my inability to latch onto it emotionally or intellectually but I must say I tend to feel dead inside by its imitators. This applies to the work of Hideo Kojima and Yoko Taro as well, whose work is similarly convoluted, but have a playfulness about them I find intoxicating regardless. 1000xResist takes itself far too seriously to develop much of a personality of its own, which leads me to a compounding issue here- the clones.
I think using clones is an excellent idea for a more budgeted title like this (fewer voice actors, fewer models) but it’s detrimental to understanding a complicated story when its singular voice actor is talking to herself in limited shades of aloof and tired. It’s a great gear to be stuck in for a sci-fi story I guess but the emotional range is lacking and the supporting voice talent isn’t doing nearly enough to inject the story with much flavour. Differentiation is needed in a narrative with so many twists and turns- because they were all technically the same people, emotionally I treated them as such. I didn’t care. I didn’t understand the stakes. My plot comprehension is pretty poor on the whole, so calling me out on that is fair, but the acting and writing is actively undermining clarity and I do see that as an underlying flaw.
The gameplay is fine. I like relaxing story-driven games without combat. But let’s talk about its derivative elements. If you’ve played your fair share of games in the past 10 years you’re probably well-acquainted with “vision quest” segments that place you in a hazy psychedelic space with oversized familiar objects untethered by gravity as symbolic waypoints for the fractured psychology of a character’s emotional distress. I am unbelievably tired of this trope, and 1000xResist makes an entire mechanic out of it. TBH it actually pissed me off less in this case just because of its commitment to the bit, but when trying to understand the story in tandem with its other quirks, there’s just layers and layers of inception here I don’t care to sift through.
Again- just my caveats! If you’re predisposed to enjoying these kinds of bendy sci-fi stories, I’m happy you’ll get a lot out of this. Not for me. To give it marginal credit, the prose itself never got anywhere near as bad as the “dumpster Jiao” line in chapter one. There is an overall maturity here I do appreciate despite my objections.
Sandonoval
15 days ago