Dustborn's Weaponised Words Hit Home on PS5, PS4 in Early 2024

I’d give it a chance if we could have more of a look at the gameplay loop. Will always give a narrative game a chance.

Telling you now, this will be review bombed by people that will never play it.

@EchoRange not needed this game will not sell past 20.000 or 8000
If you Exclude 12.000 review numbers.

Here are my sincere, heartfelt and constructive impressions of this game based on the trailer :

The characters are extremely stereotypical, the devs would be well to try and make characters that feels more relatable to a wider audience.

The general design is trying to appeal to what people think the 20 somethings like. Seeing what is selling today in the entertainment industry, I doubt this is really the case. They could really tone down the, again, stereotypical use of color, clothes and accessories we see in the video.

3-The voice over is trying to be smart by using the "Words have power" sentence in 2 ways : the way the game is played and the view that language is one of the main way power expresses itself in our society. While the try is not bad in itself, combined with all the on the nose stereotypes shown here, this, imo, will be too much for a lot of people. Shoving an ideology down people's throat rarely works in a game.

So unless they are really aiming for a very small and specific audience, it seems the devs are damning their game to failure, which I find sad as I wish success to every video game devs as I love this hobby.

@Olmaz Well, these guys are funded by the EU (Therefore indirectly I am paying taxes for this train wreck of a game), which means even if they bomb the costs are covered.

@Sanquine I'll say I'm not surprised that this is funded by the EU, but do you have the source for this?

@Olmaz

See attached: https://www.europacreativamedia.cat/rcs_auth/convocatories/list_of_selected_projects_for_website_3.pdf

And

https://www.wearedustborn.com/

Below on their website you see that both the EU and Norway are funding this.

@Sanquine Thanks! This explains a lot actually!

@Olmaz I'm curious how these characters aren't relatable? Sure the found family of misfits is a trope at this point, but 90% of vg characters are worn archetypes.

I have no memory of this game ever being announced but I'm curious about it. I will say one thing not working for me is the animation. As a story heavy game you need expressive faces, etc. and at least in the trailer there's minimal facial work selling the dialogue. It's worse since the models are somewhat realistically proportioned, despite being a little stylized.

@RudeAnimat0r As far as I can see in this trailer, these characters look like how people think a stereotypically woke person should look, talk and behave. Now I'm not saying people like this don't exist at all, but I really doubt the general gaming audience will recognize themselves in these characters.

The whole game, characters included, smells of corporate wokeness, of a checklist needed to get budget or to be consider for awards and so on. I may be wrong, but we've seen enough examples of this to make it plausible.

This added to some technical issues like you pointed, it doesn't bode well for the game.

@Olmaz I don't think it's that hard to relate to these characters. I've played as more heterosexual white dudes then I can count - I am one of those. I would rather play as characters with different life experiences as my own.

Early 2024 probably not the best time to be launching this amoungst some other huge action story driven games. This is an August type of game.

Looks and feels very generic despite trying to be edgy and woke. Sad, cause I know the devs can do excellent games!

@RudeAnimat0r I'll rephrase a bit since my previous comment was removed : my take has absolutely nothing to do with sexuality, but with the misuse of stereotypes.

Stereotypes are useful for artists not to make relatable character, but to make a point efficiently and rapidly. The use of the stereotypes in this games doesn't seem, in my opinion, to make a positive point, but more to signal an adherence to certain ESH criteria.

@Olmaz I see where you're coming from, but I guess I slightly disagree. I think by dressing and stylizing these characters a certain way they are telling you what they are not, not what they are, which are slightly different things. What they aren't is your stereotypical vg protagonist. But we don't know who these characters are, you can't know if they're relatable or not from a 2 minute trailer.

I also think game devs use worn tropes because they often do not have enough time to give you everyone's backstory. Realistically the game will have a couple hours of story content sandwiched between gameplay. It's a limitation on the medium and likely their game design as an action/adventure game.

@RudeAnimat0r Hey, slightly disagreeing is the best way to interact on comment sections, I find! : )

Your approach of stereotype to show "not what they are, but what they are not" is interesting and I'll think about it a bit more.

I guess I have seen characters like these in different media a bit too much these days to not think that they are exactly what the stereotype is generally representing, but if we try to put ourselves in the devs' head, maybe you're right and it's just them trying to diverge from more "classic" designs...

Still, the info brought by @Sanquine about this game and dev being supported by the EU makes me think the inclusivity checklist. I work for an institution of the EU and I can tell : there's nothing more them technocrats love more than a good checklist. And be sure that no budget would be allowed without said checklist being fully filled (even if it's not that way in reality, the check must be there!).

But I agree that 1 trailer alone isn't enough to be definitive. Still, what they decide to show is on what we base our opinion, so it's on them to convince us that their game is more than just a checklist.

I don't agree with characters that have to feel relatable and I dont understand this new trend of it having to be so in gaming did mario, master chief doom guy etc feel relatable to anyone!? But I do agree this game looks awful projecting thier political opinions into a game and making anyone that doesn't agree with said views the villain