Fated: The Silent Oath (PlayStation 4) Review

By Greg Giddens 07.04.2017

Review for Fated: The Silent Oath on PlayStation 4

There are a lot of gimmicky VR titles on the market, as well as titles that focus on shooting and exploration, leaving many other genres untouched. FATED: The Silent Oath mixes it up a little, proving a compelling experience that tells a short tale and does a marvellous job of immersion.

FATED: The Silent Oath is a different kind of VR experience than the majority of titles out there, concentrating on delivering a story and immersing players in a world of characters rather than gimmicks. It's more than a tech demo in scope, but unfortunately not much longer, although the strong presentation, clever design choices and strong characters certainly make a good impression during that short window.

The visuals sport a charmingly cartoon aesthetic that greets with warm and bright colours, providing a unique personality that's hard not to enjoy. It certainly features its fair share of awkward animations, with stiff unnatural moment, but it still manages to pull players into its world and make them care for the characters, largely due to strong dialogue.

In fact, it's remarkable how attached you can get to your in-game family. After escaping a burning village on horse and cart, your daughter, wife and father-in-law immediately make an impression and help your amnesia addled mind make sense of the world. Mind you, a bargain made to stave off death means you're now without a voice, limiting your interaction to yes or no responses made by nodding or shaking your head. It's certainly a bit of a clichéd setup, but it serves the story well, and the implementation of nodding and shaking your head to answer questions is particularly effective at establishing your presence within the virtual world.

Screenshot for Fated: The Silent Oath on PlayStation 4

The rest of the NPC cast are less impressive. They all sport a nice variety of voices - ones that match their characters tremendously for age - but their tone lacks emotion and this hurts immersion. That said, remarkably well-implemented 3D sound effects help pull players back in, bringing the world to life as they race along mountain passes on horse and cart, or walk through forests hunting deer.

However, FATED: The Silent Oath's biggest issue is its length, with the story concluding inside of a couple of hours. What's here is intriguing enough to be seen through; the Norse mythology is fascinating, and the puzzles are simple but nice distractions from the dialogue and hunting, but it's over with far too quickly. There are some standout sequences, such as a particularly intense dash around the side of a mountain, and the moments between the action and the RPG-esque dialogue and world building makes for a pleasant juxtaposition. Furthermore, there seems to be a plan to bring multiple episodes to market, so the clear potential behind this first outing will hopefully be built upon with more content.

Indeed, FATED: The Silent Oath's focus on narrative through the use of VR is one of the more unique offerings on the market right now, and it's a fine effort at creating an immersive world. What it's crying out for is more content, and if the planned episodic delivery of this content is forthcoming, this series could be an example of traditional games working within the VR space splendidly.

Screenshot for Fated: The Silent Oath on PlayStation 4

Cubed3 Rating

7/10
Rated 7 out of 10

Very Good - Bronze Award

Rated 7 out of 10

FATED: The Silent Oath tells a short but compelling story steeped in Norse mythology, with some great set pieces that play to VR terrifically. It’s a pleasant change to find a set of characters that are as likable as this, and there are some clever design choices at work to make the VR experience viable for such a story-driven game. It's a shame there isn't more of it.

Developer

Frima

Publisher

Frima

Genre

Adventure

Players

1

C3 Score

Rated $score out of 10  7/10

Reader Score

Rated $score out of 10  0 (0 Votes)

European release date Out now   North America release date Out now   Japan release date None   Australian release date Out now   

Comments

Comments are currently disabled

Subscribe to this topic Subscribe to this topic

If you are a registered member and logged in, you can also subscribe to topics by email.
Sign up today for blogs, games collections, reader reviews and much more
Site Feed
Who's Online?
jesusraz, Ofisil

There are 2 members online at the moment.