Chants of Sennaar Review (Vitlöksbjörn)
Think about it: Abrahamic God is the OG union buster. People got together, started building a tower, he didn't like it so he gimped their ability to communicate. Therefore, either union busting is biblical (and... ethical? If you're into that), or he's the proto Evil CEO.
The friend that recommended this game to me called it "Unmaking the sins of God" and that just about sums it up perfectly. The Tower of Babel is built (sort of) but its inhabitants can't communicate, don't understand each other and as such are in conflict, which isolates them even more.
So, who's a better mediator than you, who doesn't understand any of them?
In the beginning was the Word
For the record, even though the concept of the game is based on a biblical story, and the game's aesthetic can probably be described as "neo-mesopotamian", that's pretty much where the connections end. The story and the world are their own things.
You start the game knowing literally nothing. Luckily, you get eased into your first language by a mixture of machinery labels and gesticulation from a helpful local - but that's merely a tiny foothold. There's still going to be a lot of guessing, inferring, mistakes - with words and grammar both. This one time, I understood a man thanking me as "Are you stupid?". I was, as you can guess, pretty confused...
In this moment I am euphoric
The game allows you to freely annotate glyphs you've found. Unlike in Heaven's Vault, you don't get any guesses from the protagonist (who's completely silent), so the pleasant process of deduction is that much more satisfying.
After you've encountered a few glyphs, the game opens up a "test sheet". It contains drawings of concepts, and it's up to you to assign a glyph to each of them. If you get them all right, you'll get them locked in, and the definitive meaning of the glyph will be revealed. In other words, it's the time-tested Obra Dinn method. And sometimes the revealed meaning might differ slightly from your guess...
They have chosen their own ways, and they delight in their abominations
See, the language is always informed by the culture - and vice versa. The different peoples have drastically different ways of life and value different things. A glyph might resemble another glyph of a different language, but its meaning can be drastically different. Even better, some words which have the same "absolute" meaning (as in, they refer to the same concept) have different tones, hinting at the culture's relationship to the concept.
An example (which is not in the game) would be: you have a group of scientifically minded people in a generally conservative and religious society. They would probably call themselves "academics" or something, while others could call them "deceivers". Both words refer to the same group, and yet the undertone is completely different.
Even the grammar can be informed by the culture. How concise is the language? What is the structure of the sentence? Which parts are given extra attention, and which are an afterthought? Yes, this is also something that's in there.
Become fluent in just 30 days!
And yet, since the game contains a few languages, by definition they'll have to be limited. All of them have maybe 40 words each (that you encounter). While this is enough for the purposes of the game - requests, history, chatter - it feels a bit stifled. At the same time, the words that each language consists of also show which concepts the culture in question considers relevant.
They might have words for complicated numbers, but they lack the word for "music". What does this tell you about them?
Also, this is a pet peeve of mine: the game's statement is that communication is a tool for peace and unity. I respectfully disagree; and I present the insane levels of hatred made possible by the advent of the internet to back up my argument.
Then again, some amazing things have been made possible by that too, so eh, maybe I'm wrong. I hope so, at least.
Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great!
All in all, it's a pretty sweet game. Figuring out one culture and moving on to the next without knowing anything at all is a great feeling. And the ending in particular is incredibly powerful, delivered in a quite unique manner.
I don't think you need to be particularly smart to play this, either - the difficulty is pretty low, but not so low that it becomes boring. It's enough to tickle your brain, get it going a bit, but not overheat it. And that's perfect if you ask me.
Oh, and an insane 54% of players have gotten to the end of the game. Considering it's not that short - 10 hours for me - that is one hell of a number. Should give you an idea of just how fun this game is to play.
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