LogFAQs > #933437725

6. Heaven's Vault (inkle)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghsVOE93C9o

A triumph of narrative design. Every decision you make is tracked and incorporated into a dynamically branching story, making for a very personalized journey. This isn't a new concept, but what's impressive is how seamlessly and subtly Heaven's Vault pulls it off. Choices that you didn't realize were choices, small bits of dialogue forming a larger profile, past actions influencing later options in unexpected ways. A lot of the game ends up missable, and it's impossible to see everything on your first playthrough. Not only that, the game sometimes forecloses on your options by making past areas inaccessible or pushing a conversation on before you're done. Some of this seems like it should be annoying, like the feeling of missing out, but they pull it off smartly. In a given playthrough, your options feel like they naturally extend from previous decisions, which properly motivates the action. This comes through particularly in how the game handles imperfect or even wrong information, which is key to its archaeological goals.

You can hit all the locations in any order, or even outright skip some, which means the game cannot fully control what information you have in any given encounter. Questions are posed every time you land on a site: What is this place? What was it for? Who lived here? And so on. What follows is a process that feels like science, involving exploring, synthesizing information, and positing then revising hypotheses. Maybe Aliya has a theory based on something overheard or a resemblance to a previous location, or maybe all she has to go on is an inscription on a statue. You havent encountered words similar enough to whats there, so you make the best guess you can. Its not locked in but itll have to do for now, and even if youre completely off-base, Aliya will reference her translation, testing it against the rest of what she finds. It isnt just a matter of getting more or less information, where it feels like you can min/max for the best order, because the conclusions being drawn are complex and personal, influencing the tenor of each scene. Presumably, a speedrun of the game would involve making a beeline for a few essential locations, especially since every location is there regardless of whether youve been told about it, and it would still have a coherent narrative, just one involving a lot more guesswork on Aliyas part.

I mentioned inscriptions and, oh yeah, they invented a written language for this game. Its a testament to how much the game has going on that I didnt lead with that, though I absolutely could have because it's great. Wherever you go, you find artifacts and buildings from an ancient civilization that seemed to love putting inscriptions on everything. Translation involves slotting in previous words youve encountered, and then guessing for new words you encounter. Theres a pictogramic quality to a lot of it and a lot of words are combinations of other words. Over time you pick up on more of the rules governing the language, like what symbols relate to plurality or which words have to do with water. Its not terribly complex the grammar rules are just English, and there arent any words or phrases without a clear English equivalent, as can happen with real languages. Its more like a giant system of symbols than anything with a rich social history, but it does make for a compulsive loop. There are momentous plot revelations elsewhere, but much of the game is about has this cozy build-up of knowledge by small increments. The satisfaction is like the sort I get from a jigsaw puzzle, where every small bit of progress feels good even though the big picture is a long way off. Confirming a translation is satisfying like connecting two puzzle pieces together, and ruling out a previous wrong translation is satisfying like collecting puzzle pieces of the same colour in a pile, in this very good metaphor.

Ive spent more time describing the storytelling than the story so far. It's not the main draw, but theres great stuff there, too. The dominant religion in the world is the Loop, which is the belief that time is cyclical, making Aliyas field of archaeology kind of fringe as many dont regard or even believe in history. There are robots that are not built, but dug out of the ground. Everything you learn is placed on a massive timeline which is cool, if a bit finicky to navigate. There are major themes I can comment on, but so far at least the details of the world function better as intriguing hooks, as archaeology revealing how much may be irretrievably lost and forever fragmentary.

On a smaller scale, you have the story of Aliya and her robot companion Six. Opinions on Aliya are a bit mixed from what Ive seen, but I think shes a great character. Perhaps there are dialogue choices that push her into being way more of an asshole, but for me she was just prickly, with a strained relationship with everyone she knows. My favourite bit of characterization is her uneasy relationship with her roots. As an Elborethan orphan taken as a child to imperial Iox she doesn't fully belong anywhere, and there are a lot of interesting moments where you decide how she identifies herself. Her relationship with Six is very malleable and lends a lot of colour to the world. At any point as you explore you can press Remark or Question which strikes up a conversation, which is a nice unobtrusive way to do lore.

Also, I mentioned it earlier, but its got some weird UI and movement. Its not Gabriel Knight 3 levels of weird, but a bit like an evolutionary step from a year after that rather than a game in 2019? I don't even know if I find it obtuse-bad or anarchronistic-charming, so I'm just mentioning it here and trailing off

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