Dustborn Review

Reviewer’s Note: Given the sizable number of story critiques, it’s impossible to avoid SPOILERS. Read on at your own risk.

For a developer who’s stuck with familiar adventure trappings (Dreamfall Chapters, Draugen), Red Thread Games certainly swings for the fences here. In this fictional Divided States of America, Jackie Kennedy takes the bullet meant for John F. Kennedy in Dulles, Texas, which inspires The President to create a new federal authority called “Justice”. The decline into fascism during his decades-long tenure – whether intentional or not – eventually Balkanizes the Republic. As a result, most former Americans are either governed by JFK’s tyrannical regime or mysterious tech-bro authoritarians called “The Puritans”. Considering this backdrop alongside this studio’s first dip into more substantial gameplay mechanics, Dustborn is primed to either rise above or crumble under such heightened pressure.

Fast-forward several decades and step into the shoes of Pax, a young woman deemed criminal because of her supernatural ability to influence people with her voice. Whether called “Anomal” or “Divergent” depending on in-/out-group dynamics, the story remains the same: a nationwide radio broadcast afflicted select individuals with strange powers. How that power (or “Vox”) is expressed varies between Anomals – think a more-constrained variety of The X-Men, but they’re all equally viewed as dangerous. With a chance of escaping both militarized factions, Pax and her crew steal important Puritan data in former California and drive cross-country to Nova Scotia, Canada.

The heat is on this squad from the start, and that’s loudly emphasized. There’s a tinge of satisfaction when utilizing Pax’s first Vox to silence everyone in the getaway car; it’s a shame that couldn’t have been spammed throughout Dustborn’s entirety. The peripatetic lifestyle with Sai, Noam, Theo, and eventually others isn’t ideal, but there’s no other way forward. In for a penny, in for a pound. To get into – let alone make it across – Justice Territory relies on them pretending to be a touring punk rock band, squeezing in scheduled gigs whilst discreetly meeting with illegal resistance libraries that maintain underground Internet hubs.

There’s an interesting duality here: society’s most oppressed having their voice be a superpower. It’s rather appropriate, then, that the biggest gameplay pie slice is conversational. Dialogue trees emulate TellTale’s shtick with a cel-shaded comic book style – sometimes littering the screen with several different fonts – while supplementary rhythm segments are about matching face buttons in sequence. The latter has grown into a meme itself, both in its bland mechanics and godawful song lyrics. It’s hard to undersell how a theme song that awkwardly ties their plight to other downtrodden classes while also cheerily arousing replacement anxieties could sound so tone-deaf. Imagine Magneto writing a mutant-supremacist ballad and his band being unironically framed as heroes. Perhaps it’s fitting how the crew’s first public show is to border guards.

This unofficial concert can go in one of two directions. Blowing it results in a guard lazily extolling the “keep politics out of your art” argument to them. Easy to see where this is going. Of all the shoe-horned parallels between certain gamers and fascists, exploiting that phrase despite Mussolini and Goebbels believing the exact opposite will always be exceptionally stupid. Succeeding, on the other hand, depicts that same guard effectively say “I’m something of a rebellious spirit myself”. So, in this context, the goose-stepping foot soldier’s negative response was to avoid saying they sucked. Even with its progressively-minded motifs in full view, the muddled script can’t follow through on its simple convictions.

Stepping back to its TellTale-esque mix of dialogue and casual puzzle-adventure further degrades its writing. Pax’s different Vox include “Trigger”, “Cancel”, and so on, which cause different conversational effects. It’s fair to recoil at this Tumblr-fuelled ham-handedness in an alternate history, especially given how they’re discovered. Pax’s ME-EM Device (aesthetically similar to an old Game & Watch) enables her to view the world differently and spot misinformation entities freely floating around or infecting other people’s minds. The design template makes sense: encourage exploration of each area and wrangle a few interdimensional beings that gate new moves.

As usual, Dustborn makes this conceit so grating by inundating itself with progressive evangelicalism. Even as someone who acknowledges & respects socio-political biases informing a creative’s work, pushback against its execution is always warranted. In this case, making Pax a Disinformation Ghostbuster to free victims from thinking in circles about vaccine conspiracies, government surveillance, etc. is lazy navel-gazing at best. Specifically, framing government paranoia this way is rather suspicious from a team that received grants from the EU and Norwegian Film Institute. The Snowden Files are over a decade old. Even if public funding didn’t influence Red Thread’s quasi-agitprop (they’ve received small grants before), their authenticity can’t help but come into question.

Questionable authenticity could be seen as a running theme, which is surprising given director/lead writer Ragnar Tørnquist’s past work on the acclaimed Dreamfall series. In that respect, Dustborn does have a reliable plot foundation: beginning on tension, overcoming setbacks, and so on. Everything around said beats though feels so poisoned by artifice, as if more driven to make statements conjured up in the shower than authentic storytelling. There’s more airtime given towards proper pronoun etiquette of a sentient robot and a mute child than one of the most pivotal enemy factions. There are constant reminders about outside threats whilst never substantially addressing Pax’s emotional manipulation. Its anticlimactic finale and forced deus ex machinas can’t help but feel like natural by-products of a thematically-confused and intrinsically-hollow core.

In the abstract, this cross-country odyssey works in segmenting various characters’ alleged growth. Almost each chapter – which is structured like a numbered comic book issue – is a short story in a new environment with a potential gameplay wrinkle or two thrown in before recouping for the night. The player’s being settled into a familiar tempo: rehearsing some songs, chatting with the crew, potentially gifting someone viands or memorabilia, and so on. The words stated and things gifted can influence their “Coda” and, subsequently, where they end up in the finale. An otherwise functioning system tied to something not worth caring about.

It’s hard to pay attention to – let alone invest in – such an interminable slog. After the hastened opener, almost every subsequent chapter is like wading through molasses. For the sake of having one more small hurdle or one more quip-laden setup, plot progression advances at a snail’s pace. Without the option of skipping (most) dialogue, all of this filler inflates its prodigious eighteen-hour runtime. Dialogue is an acquired taste in the same way Hawaiian Pizza is. With special exception to two side characters (of the dozen-plus here), most words spoken are emotionally-overwrought palavers with corny humour. Whether fighting, chilling, or simply walking, every goddamned minute has to have someone spouting words – no matter how annoying or vacuous they sound. The two worst ways to fill an audio void: nails scratching against a chalkboard or Sai opening her mouth.

The final big piece of this putrid gameplay gumbo is character action. The bones are quite familiar: over-the-shoulder camera that gets a bit too close, a magnetized bat reminiscent of Kratos’ Leviathan Axe, an emphasis on cooldown abilities, and side characters fighting alongside. Each characters’ Vox abilities naturally transplant to these bouts; whereas Pax’s “Block” in dialogue will silence anyone nearby. Enemies within that shout’s area-of-effect are temporarily frozen. Depending on whom she’s teamed up with, certain Vox can be paired together – a befuddling spell like ‘Hoax’ paired with a certain party member can fool them into thinking they’re on fire, resulting in damage over time.

On paper, the foundation seems fine; hell, even Pax’s expanding Vox kit from her ME-EM handheld is a sound pacing mechanism. Execution is a far different story. For starters, this ranks among the most kinaesthetically unpleasant action games in recent memory: disruptive framerate dips, contorted animations from wonky enemy targeting, stiff & unreliable camera, the list goes on. “Imagine Norse God of War but worse in every way” would be a fitting tagline. Retaining its closest inspiration’s bigger foibles (sloppy hit magnetism and shallow combat arenas for example) while exasperating such repetitive button-mashing highlights why its easiest difficulty limits the amount of enemies.

Even if quick to get through its rotten combat, selecting less enemies feels antithetical to its own goals. Taking the fight to as many fascists wherever possible seems more in spirit with Dustborn’s ethos. Making it so effortless and flat on any difficulty only cements where it went wrong. With Pax, there’s no tension since she quickly regenerates health during combat and has no Game Over screen. Her fail state is the equivalent of a quick nap before a teammate helps her up. And for a game so tied to the power of one’s voice, fights against robots (who’re unaffected by all Vox) limits its sparse tactical dynamics even further. About the only credit worth giving is the optional removal of obnoxious combat banter, so that at least its raucous audio is limited to poorly-balanced sound effects and stale background music.

When it’s all said and done, what’s left is a strange – if admittedly ambitious – goulash of superhero antics, cross-country vistas, and budding relationships that feel uniquely boring. Red Thread so desperately wants to tackle the troubled soul of modern America whilst also batting around enemies with powers and snark in a cel-shaded dystopia. It can’t really make any meaningful commentary because its allusions are so softened and confused. Being an Anomal is less like a targeted minority and more of an aesthetic, akin to a spiked leather jacket. Dustborn is that jacket littered with corporate logos: not merely superficial, but also achingly insincere.