izigame.me

The worst part of engaging with postmodernist fiction is that you end up seeing the same thing over and over because of the author's need to convey an idea, feeling like they didn't get it exactly right and restarting again.
Starting The World Before after Syberia 3 you'd be forgiven for thinking that Microids learned on their mistakes. The main character underwent a radical change of appearance and is fostering a relationship with an actual non-mechanical human person that is able to reciprocate. She is suffering unfairly albeit predictably the realistic consequences of her actions. Growth of characterisation? In a Benoit Sokal game? Nevermind, it's just a pretext to kickstart another wild goose chase. Can I go back to the cool Kate Walker that has a punk girlfriend? But no, it will be all over soon, we will be back to default looks, default behaviours, default (by now) Syberia experience. Kate Walker isn't allowed to stop for a second and reflect on her selfdestructive tendencies - a thing the game's writing highlights, but doesn't elaborate on. Lampshading cannot replace character development or storywriting.
The parallel plot is probably the better thing to happen to the franchise, but even then it's uninspiring. Every once in a while you would think "I can see where this is going and it would be pretty cool if they subverted the expectation here, went somewhere else instead" and suddenly they do and it feels refreshing. Then it's all messed up when they reveal that the original guess was the correct one anyway, we come back on track. The game attempts to bring up serious adult subjects, but doesn't commit in favour of magic realism. Good job pretending to make bold statements, but instead doing a by-the-numbers story.
The game controls extremely sluggishly. The movement is glacial and you will be terrified of exploration for fear of loss of time. You still need to align the character perfectly, you will still get stuck. The camera is still semi-fixed and the logic of where it is pointing bends itself to no one. Silent Hill came out 23 years before this game, why is this still happening? It's not cinematic, people have enough controls for both movement of character and camera, we don't need to hide ugly skyboxes and lack thereof nowadays. Maybe I want to look at things. The game is actually pretty when it doesn't lag or stutter. The voice acting is better than before, actually mixed correctly, but there are obvious gaps in directing, you will hear the same person switching back and forth between "sanatorium" and "sanitarium" within the same dialog and different actors cannot agree on how they pronounce names. The accents are terrible. The delivery is competent, but obviously everyone is bringing different energies into a conversation.
All the adventure game tinkering devolved into following a straight path and occasionally solving something akin to puzzle boxes from The Room franchise (but not nearly as complex). If you are stuck on something it's because you cannot do it right now, not because you cannot figure it out.
The story ends in a sequel hook as if the writers have anything left to say, but Kate Walker really is doomed to send elderlies to the mammoths, get in trouble with authorities, help defenceless caricatures while astounding locals with her behaviour in an endless cycle, and talking to an automaton that isn't a real character, but a surrogate for the conversations inside her head. And the cowards can't even give us the cool haircut with blue dye for more than 15 minutes.