Nobody Wants to Die Review (PS5)

What would happen if humans created a way to make death optional by transferring consciousness from one body to another? Nobody Wants to Die answers that question in the most realistic way possible: the rich live forever, and the poor barely live at all.

Set in New York in 2329, Nobody Wants To Die tells the story of James Karra; a baseball star in his first body, but when he died and his consciousness was transferred to a new body, that shell's muscles and reaction times weren't up to snuff, and so he found a new career as a detective. Another body or two later and a century old, James is a hard drinking, no nonsense, rulebook-out-of-the-window cop seeking justice in a city that's rotten to the core.

The game begins with a suicide case that James' superiors seemingly want swept under the rug as quickly as possible. There's evidence to suggest that there's more to this suicide than meets the eye, and so James goes rogue, determined to blow the case wide open whatever the cost. Throughout his investigations, Detective Karra discovers horrific truths, unearths twisted conspiracies, and learns just how depraved the future elite are once emboldened with the shield of immortality.

Along the way you'll work with a police liaison named Sara via an earpiece who is aware of you already when you first speak, thanks to your reputation on the force. Initially hesitant and suspicious of James' methods, Sara makes for a likable co-lead, and her story is a highlight of the game. You'll make dialogue choices while talking to Sara and other characters, and these decisions open up potential new conversation options, and will ultimately alter how your story ends.

You should see Nobody Wants To Die off in under ten hours depending on how long you spend on your investigations, and it's a mostly captivating tale. The short playtime means that the story moves at a brisk pace, but it still finds time to pose some interesting questions, and give you plenty to think about regarding the nature of memory, the ethics of immortality, and dealing with trauma.

Actually playing Nobody Wants To Die involves exploring crime scenes in first person and then using your detective tools like X-Ray, an ultraviolet torch, and the Reconstructor to work out what happened. You'll rewind and fast-forward through timelines of events looking for anomalies, follow bullet trajectories to discover who was doing the shooting, and use X-Ray to find hidden items or locations.

These investigations aren't difficult to solve. Which tool you need to use in which situation is telegraphed to you, and there's even the option to push square to enter 'Hint Mode' which will highlight the item you need to interact with to proceed. It's not exactly riveting gameplay, and we never once felt genuinely challenged, but the ease of the puzzles means that the pace of the story never stumbles because you spent an hour looking for an elusive clue.

Occasionally, you'll have to cobble together the various pieces of evidence you've acquired to form a hypothesis. Everything is laid out in front of you on a grid, and you can pick up evidence and then drop it on another piece of evidence and if the two fit together then you'll form an idea which can then be dropped on another piece of evidence to further develop the theory. This requires some thought, and the links aren't always obvious, but if you're struggling you can just keep trying combinations and brute force it without penalty.

Nobody Wants To Die's greatest strength is its world, both aesthetically and conceptually. Future New York is envisioned as a cross between hard-boiled detective movies from the '40s and a Cyberpunk 2077-style technological hell. It's similar to how the Fallout games use '50s iconography and technology in a future setting, and it makes for a striking combination.

There's flying cars but they're based on models from the 1940s, while cops have access to sci-fi tools in their investigations but they dress like they're in The Untouchables. Gazing out across the future New York cityscape is wondrous; a city that seems to be in perpetual night-time, Karra always with a bottle of scotch or a cigarette in hand, while flying cars, neon lights, and holographic advertisements remind you that it's 2329.

The worldbuilding here is largely excellent too. Despite some of the wild concepts that Nobody Wants To Die throws at you, it always does a good job of explaining them to you without ever feeling like characters are having one of those exposition dump conversations purely for your benefit. There's no, "Hey, do you remember that time they invented immortality, James?" moments, and instead you simply learn the history of the world through natural conversation, as well as items you can look at as you explore.

Graphically, the game is quite astonishing at times. Character models can be a little rough around the edges, but the locations you'll visit are wonderfully realised. Nobody Wants To Die does a superb job of convincing you that you're actually in a vast city, an illusion made all the more impressive only after you put the controller down and consider just how small the areas you explore in the game actually are.

It's a fantastic achievement, really. There are tell-tale signs that this is a lower budget title once you actually stop to think about them — you rarely interact with other characters in person, you see flying traffic mostly from a distance, and the aforementioned small play areas — but the game does an excellent job of hiding it. It's a title that's punching above its weight, and we've got to applaud the ambition and execution here.