REVIEW : In Other Waters (PC)

1
429
REVIEW : In Other Waters (PC)

REVIEW : In Other Waters (PC)

It starts with the most beautiful and unique interfaces. A colourful origami mystery of panels, controls and switches, at once tactile and fragile, vintage and high-tech, like a holographic astrolabe. At its core, a ring of ocean rendered in the style of an old-time sea chart, its skillfully nested outlines travelling past the dashboard into a turquoise haze.

The way that In Other Waters envisions humanity’s first clash with alien creatures is a bit unique from other sci-fi stories. Rather of alien creatures exploding war against Earth or the vast view of humans conquering other colonised planets, developer Gareth Damian Martin’s otherwordly experience takes an extra gentle path. It’s a peaceful and serene experience in which you travel an underwater eco-system told through the information of a scientist.

REVIEW : In Other Waters (PC)

This is the pulse of In Other Waters, an unusual and pleasing concept game i.e set on an alien planetoid. Under the turquoise tides of the planet, Gliese 677Cc is a blooming alien creatures eco-system. It’s a sea loaded with strangeness and new and unidentified creatures. “In Other Waters” game is a fine-tuned stability of wonder and fear, creating an undersea adventure like no other game. There is small to hinder the rhythm – no in-game enemy to win over, and only a few tools such as laser cutters that open up initially remote regions.

During the first of my eight hours with the game, you will be worried about the cetacean noises and cracks of the beautifully tuned environment sway begin to grate, that replication might provoke you to skim past important pieces of writing. That appeal is most dangerous when you’re roaming through the toxic liquid, your eye flicking between a dwindling oxygen stock on the left and the slow unfolding explanation on the right. But these harsh areas are manageable enough once your fear is cooled.

REVIEW : In Other Waters (PC)

That player-enacted symbiosis helps a well-paced, exposition-lite story of accompanying with outer space creature life, against the ravages of interplanetary capitalism. Ellery is an agent of Baikal, a company that strips entire worlds of stocks. Operating for this entity is the cost she pays for leaving an Earth whose seas have been purified by climate change. You’ll encounter scores of bewitching lifeforms, accumulating bits of plant frond or shell with a device that matches a shutter-operated camera, and collecting them at the lab you reveal early in the game.

The lab itself – which works as a chapter-breaking heart – is a charming example, its tiles piled like slides beneath a microscope. Here, you can examine specimens you’ve gathered to fill out a database, Ellery’s first views and thoughts-blowing into magically nerdy stories of predation and breeding. The game’s lead artist and writer Gareth Damian Martin is a florid designer, but he and his co-writers hit an equilibrium in the game among rhapsody and clinical accuracy. Gather sufficient data and you’ll open a picture of the creature, a letter to the AI from Ellery’s world.

REVIEW : In Other Waters (PC)

The aliens are like nothing else you’ll find in a game, their eeriness only magnified by the information that they are sad tributes to creatures whose homes we are finishing. There’s a huge stress on dependence: every creature is the way it is gratitude to its interactions with another, be it turning a much bigger organism into a home, or farming bacteria for food. Some people are different, laced together like Ellery and the AI.

Interesting discoveries, indeed, but as a technician, the taxonomy system feels a bit stubborn. Progress through the play is broadly characterised by a database achievement percentage, visible on your save file. Maxing a percentage is the sign of a more ruthless, rapacious fantasy than In Other Waters – it conflicts with the supple tone of Ellery’s notes, which often end with yet more questions.

REVIEW : In Other Waters (PC)

Accepting the planet’s secret rather than attempting to resolve every last one is a portion of the game’s ecological message, and as such, that touch of completionism looks out of place.

It’s nit-picking, though, skip the second you venture back out into the water. The game’s tone palette is extraordinary, creating an environment most open-world blockbusters can only imagine of. Beyond that possibility wash of radioactive turquoise and sherbet yellow, you can expect sharp stews of red and green, and sunken corners where the map is a tracery of bone emerging from midnight blue. Expanding the mood is Amos Roddy’s meditative computerised score, which is elegantly attuned to the mysterious plot.

REVIEW : In Other Waters (PC)

Some of the major dramatic beats are tethered to melodies, played out note by note as you click between lines.

REVIEW : XCOM : Chimera Squad (PC)

REVIEW OVERVIEW
Conclusion
8
Previous articleHGUnified : Red Dead Redemption 2 | First Person | Minimal HUD | Live stream 2020-04-28
Next articleHGUnified : Red Dead Redemption 2 | Minimal HUD | Live stream 2020-04-28
review-in-other-waters-pcIt might seem annoying that you can't "escape" In Other Waters' interface and explore the naturalistic three-dimensional landscape hinted at by Ellery's sketches - certainly, I'd love to see a 3D interpretation of one particular colonial lifeform - but that's missing the point. The AI's perspective is reality, its collaboration with Ellery producing a world. That concept of reality as a co-production, fashioned by on-going interaction and acceptance, is anathema to the version offered by Baikal, which cynically divides existence into humans and the things we use. It's a concept In Other Waters makes you live, scan by scan, waypoint by waypoint, as you contemplate an ocean that is every bit as unreal and fragile as our own.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here