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Indigo Prophecy

This is a somewhat mixed review.

Indigo Prophecy isn't really like any other game out there (that I've run into yet). Someone has called it an 'interactive drama,' and I tend to think that's a really apt fitting. The idea is that you as a player are tied to the story, not the protagonist. You control the dialogue from both sides - 'what will the characters talk about next?' and decide which character has what advantage, while still balancing things out so the story can proceed.

I love this idea.

Furthermore, it's been said that this type of game allows many different stories - if you have a protagonist call his brother on the phone to warn him of a murder attempt, you save his life. If you instead have the protagonist run to get to his brother, he's too late... and now you have one of two different stories that may unfold for the rest of the game.

I love this idea, too.

One of the problems with action games is that you can only give the player so many controls. "Run," "Jump," "Ranged weapon," "Melee," "Block," "Interact," "Special move 1," "Special move 2," whatever. The trouble is, this often gives rise to awkward action sequences in which the player finds bugs in the AI, or maybe one of the moves is just naturally more powerful than the other (see: stealth in any Elder Scrolls game). In Indigo prophecy, the developers eschewed the idea of controlling exactly what your characters do for the ability to script action sequences. Fights and action sequences look more fluid - this is one of the precursors to 'scripted events' that you'll now see in big AAA titles... you might be tromping along in a forest when a dog jumps out to bite you, and a little icon that says 'mash the space bar!' appears.

I love this idea absolutely. Get a little less control over how the character acts for a hell of a better story.

What this all boils down to is that the guys and gals at Quantic have some really good ideas. Very industry-shaking. The game is played through with minigames, gestures, abnormal controls - there's no 'interact' button that opens doors, pulls levers, eats food, or talks to strangers. There's instead a different gesture that you make with your mouse for each movement - and it feels much more interesting. Trapped in the dark with a fear of claustrophobia? Control your breathing using this control scheme, and continue with your objective. Really interesting.

The trouble is that it was, in general, very poorly executed.

The story started out grabbing your attention very well... but it soon became clear that the writers hadn't researched a damn thing. At one point, there were three helicopters between two tall New York buildings moving at high speed to chase a target - one chopper could have done the job and there's no way you're going to fit three in there. When the target ducked into the building, they all left. I couldn't suspend my disbelief. As if that sort of thing isn't bad enough, they decided to add an extra antagonist in at the very end - like a deus ex machina for the villains. "Hey lol i wuz here da hole tiem, now u fite me 2 k."

It got pretty clear that, although they COULD have had many storylines, they really only had one. Save your brother? He shows up once more in the game and you don't interact with him at all. Miss a clue that changes an entire investigation? Fuck it, you'll get some tip to figure it out later. Cop suspicious of you but you make it out of the questioning free and clear after hiding all the evidence? Oh well, he finds a piece of evidence you simply didn't know about and he'll come back for you later.

Most of the non-action-sequence puzzles involved dealing with the frustratingly bad controls (these are the same controls as Parasite Eve 2... ugh). At one point, you must walk around a three-story bookstore packed to the gills with tomes, all to find a book that the owner wants... for literally no reason other than to make you walk around and do it. Like, that's the entire obstacle: "the controls are awful and tedious, so deal with them for a while."

A lot of the really clever off the wall sequences are just there to milk the game time. Climbing a fence? You have five seconds to make each quarter-circle gesture. Every gesture moves you a little farther up the fence. Fall off? No big deal, start again. Too slow? No big deal, nothing's looking for you. Enjoy this tedious, timed obstacle with absolutely no sense of tension.

The action sequences involve playing a game similar to simon says with two sets of arrow keys... and usually they're happening so fast that you DON'T GET TO WATCH THE ACTION. You have to pay attention to the simon says game instead, and watch the action from your peripheral vision. Talk about an immersion breaker!

The story, as I mentioned, started well, but as Winfrey pointed out earlier - that shit jumped the shark toward the end.

The writers seem to be D&D enthusiasts doubling as writers - no character was well fleshed out, human relationships were completely unbelievable, motives were muddy ("lol u fite tha group wif ULTIMITTTTTT POWERRRRRR" "y they want dis girl den?" "Bcuz she can give dem ULTIMITTTTTT POWERRRRRRR" "uh"), consequences were muddy ("deez guys control tha wurld from day 1!!!!! dey can do anything! O but dey need tha girl so they can do MOAR anything!" "no i never gib u da girl, or they make humanity slavezz!" "uh dey already own humanity but i just werk 4 dem k gimme girl"), the limitations of the antagonists were absolutely inconsistent ("I ken keel u wif a jesture n can telport 2!" "lol 2 bad i run away" "damn!" "o u cot up? now we fist fite." "but i kill u wif jesture!" "no, fist."), and character decisions were unbelievable as hell.

The only thing that was really, REALLY well executed was the camerawork during cinematics. I thought that was very, very inspired. You really get a sense of the set and the actions, and you end up remembering what happened without remembering that there were twenty-four different angles of it happening. That's good directing - they put a scene into the audience's head without distracting them with the angles. During third-person control, the camera was somewhat weak... but it's hard to make a good third-person camera in video games, I'd give that a pass.

From a technology standpoint, I can't bash the game too much. Environments were small and sparse, but I imagine that's a budget and technology thing - the game shows its age pretty hard. People's movements are really unrealistic - but again, this is a bit of an old game.

Frankly, I would absolutely recommend this game if it is on a HUGE sale... but only if you have the ability to see a game's potential. If you want to be entertained by a story, expect to laugh out loud at the ludicrousness of it all. If you want to veg out to an action game, give it a straight pass. If you're willing to look past some of this ridiculous shit and wish VERY HARD for the same game with better writers and a bigger budget, then jump right in.

At the very least, you'll kill a couple hours watching a bad movie, so that ain't bad.

From what I understand, Quantic Dream has put out another game - Heavy Rain - that won multiple awards. Unfortunately, it was for the PS3 only, so I will probably never play it. I would expect that that Heavy Rain is a much better executed version of Indigo Prophecy - really, IP could have been incredible if it were just taken back to the drawing board for another year or so. So much potential.