As Dusk Falls Review (FirestormMk3)
I want to start by saying I like these kinds of games - the TellTale games, Life is Strange, Heavy Rain, Pentiment, Disco Elysium, etc. I enjoy narrative-focused experiences. I start with that because the criticism that this is just a movie is often leveled at these kinds of games by people expecting something more action-oriented. This however really is just a movie with essentially some QTEs. While occassionally you do also get to choose the tone a character uses to respond (i.e. joke, sincere, etc) none of this really matters. This is made even more verifiable because the game displays a route map at the end of each chapter. While the main beats of a game like Detroit: Become Human that also does this stay in tact, you see the massive web of alternate paths. As Dusk Falls pulls back the curtain to show you that each choice plays a variation of a scene that immediately returns to the single thread.
Now, all of this could still be a good experience if it felt interesting and immersive. I didn't hate Gone Home for instance and there's zero agency in that game. As Dusk Falls doesn't leverage this lack of agency to tell an interesting story or suck you into its world though. It commits the sin of just being boring. It's like watching a C-tier straight to DVD low-budget action movie where occasionally it pauses until you click the mouse button or move the mouse in a specified direction. I write this review having played the first four chapters out of six. I may finish the last two later just to see the ending, but I cannot believe anything could happen that would change my outlook, especially as chapter 4 made me stop because I spend 75% of its runtime thinking repeatedly until I actually said out loud, "I do not care!" Most of the content of that chapter could be cut and nothing would be lost. If it were a proper movie I would have fast forwarded.
I'm waiting to the end here to address the visuals, because everyone's mileage may very on them, but for me they were what made sure I was never sucked into the events on screen. The environments are fully animated 3D models that move while all of the characters are 2D pictures of real people that do not move, they just jump from one image to the next. The effect is jarring when they interact with the environment. For example you would see a still 2D picture of a person posed as though to open a door, then the modeled 3D door swings fully open, the picture disappears, the door swings shut, and the picture reappears of them now inside. Action scenes are 3D environments with 2D pictures, again not art but of real people, flashing around the screen. Watching a static image of a person pasted on a fully moving bicycle was downright hard to watch. I can't help but feel they should have used nothing but still artwork, even if it was photos, or made everything move, but this doesn't even have the excuse of a game like Paradise Killer that does something similar but because it used drawn art for characters. Even then it has interactions done in a visual novel style. The extremely odd choice As Dusk Falls makes is jarring at best, and sometimes actually gave me a headache. The actually good voice work is wasted on this game that fails in design, presentation, and execution. I cannot recommend this game to anyone.