#155: Draugen
Walking simulator horror misses the mark on grief and mental illness
This review was originally posted to Twitter on August 8, 2019.
Initial release: May 29, 2019
Platform: PC, PlayStation 4, XBox One
Developer: Red Thread Games
This review has spoilers. I doubt too many people have played this or intend to, but you have been warned.
It seems in the last few years since The Last of Us came out there’s been a string of character-driven games where whatever you might be doing takes a backseat to the characters you do it as, and Draugen continues that tradition nicely. Red Thread Games, the developers behind the Dreamfall series, have a talent for atmosphere and character writing, but I don’t know that I particularly vibe with this game.
First, I must say that this game is absolutely gorgeous. It’s obvious to me that Red Thread were inspired by the environment artist’s portfolio that is Dear Esther; rural Norway in autumn is depicted in the most picturesque fashion. The game’s artsy protagonist Edward couldn’t draw it better himself. The overall presentation is solid, really — there’s a soft quality to everything, with quiet, soothing music and a generally easy-going pace that stays steady throughout the game, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a more gorgeous tribute to Norwegian romanticism.
Set in October 1923, Edward, an American naturalist, travels to a remote Norwegian village with his teenaged ward Lissie in search of his missing journalist sister, Betty. They find the village empty, and a mystery gradually unfolds surrounding feuding brothers and a failed mine. While normally this would be the start of a more traditional horror story — and indeed, Draugen was originally announced as one all the way back in 2013 — it’s clear that Red Thread had to radically deviate from their original vision. Rather than an open-world survival horror, Draugen is a character-driven “walking simulator” mostly confined to the village. the story unfolds over six days, with the narrative rooted in the interaction between edward and lissie. but this is where the game really shines. edward is middle-aged, stuffy, humorless and unathletic; lissie is bright, energetic, sarcastic, and imaginative, hopping about like a magpie. together they work to unravel the mystery of his sister’s disappearance and that of the villagers’. this is a story about grief, isolation, trauma, and coming to terms with the fact that sometimes closure cannot be had.
About two-thirds through the game it’s revealed that Lissie does not exist, that she’s a figment of Edward’s imagination. This is foreshadowed, rather clumsily I might add, in the way she often seems to teleport behind you as the plot demands, and never actually interacts with anything. Aside from her is a huge angelic statue that sometimes appears to berate Edward, referred to in the subtitles only as “the Entity.” Interestingly, the Entity and Edward’s hallucination of his sister’s voice share the same actress. These manifestations of undefined mental illness, brought on by the grief of a dead sibling and double parental suicide when Edward was only a child, are a disappointing twist that doesn’t even connect to the greater mystery surrounding the disappeared villagers.
While the dialogue between Lissie and Edward is amazing, with Lissie pouring on the 1920s lingo and Edward being what he is, that is to say he’s a stuffy nerd from a quieter time, it’s galling that he’s unwilling or unable to appreciate her despite the fact that she’s a figment of his imagination. There are quite a lot of little details that go untouched. The cut on Edward’s lip, for instance. Or the fact that Lissie — in this case short for Alice — is also a short name for Elizabeth (which Betty is also short for.) The game simply doesn’t address any of it.
And perhaps that’s kind of the point — some mysteries go unsolved, sometimes closure is unattainable. “There’s some questions got answers, and some haven’t,” right? But that feels cheap. Either way we get a game where the individual parts are greater than the sum. Perhaps it’s merely a victim of a long development time, I don’t know.
Final thoughts: while it’s a fair bit more interactive and less impenetrably pretentious than Dear Esther, even if we ignore how clunky the approach to mental illness is and just take it at face value, the end result is still clunky and cliched. But at least it’s pretty.
