I have not edited my own game in 4 years and a half, an adventure title in 16 and a Point & Click in almost 20. Next Tuesday will be exciting! ” ,
WOLFENSTEIN: THE OLD BLOOD
At first, when many – both users and professionals in the sector – that of the Crowdfunding or the KickstarterIt sounded like Sanskrit, a small but well-known studio asked for $ 400,000 for a game set in a very minority genre although truly faithful.
The 400,000 dollars took a sigh to collect. But the thing did not stop here, much less, but it grew day by day until reaching almost
3.5 million dollars, an unprecedented success that caught everyone – starting with Schafer himself – by surprise and certified the ability to achieve money that Crowdfunding allows although right now it does not have the strength of a couple of years ago. In the financial world
several arguments can be given as to why such a figure was achieved. But in the world of videogame there is only one reason: The return of Tim Schafer to the field he knows best, the field of Graphic Adventure.
One of the pioneers who helped establish bases, redefine schemes and achieve mechanics in a genre – the Point & Click adventure –
that continue generation after generation in use, the promise of the man who has in his curriculum masterpieces, icons, sacred cows or whatever you want to call the likes of Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle or Grim Fandango
It was too attractive. But at the moment of truth it has forced us to wait too long, committing the tremendous mistake of splitting it and launching a first part
that is supposed to continue in a few months, but that at the moment of truth has taken almost a year and a half in that we can see the end of the story. Now, with the entire Broken Age, let’s see if the promises are true, the justified hype and the essence as before.
Shay & Vella
The very first image of Broken Age is already a declaration of intentions of the studio and its creators in this story of maturity and growth: Two teenagers, a boy and a girl, face each other on a black screen that changes suddenly to two different scenarios. On the left we have a beautiful landscape of sunny sunset on the edge of a lake. On the right, a futuristic technified room
with the sidereal space in the background. Each one of the boys goes to sleep, she reclines in a tree; him in a bed of virtual sheets. And now we choose who to
wake up to first. She is Vella, a girl who lives in a village once brave, today cowards who have preferred to modify the traditions to live in peace in exchange for fear. He is Shay , a boy who wants something more than the easy life he leads in a spaceship with an AI that spoils him constantly and does not let him grow.
And here we are going to tell. We are not going to tell you anything else, not even what happens to them in the first bars beyond that both want to face a destiny that is imposed on them. And we will not do it because the plot of the game, each scenario and characters that inhabit it, every detail of a narrative that does not always look for humor, deserve to be discovered by yourselves,
because we assure you that the waste of imagination and absolute creative freedom It is enormous at the same time that it looks for to surprise us, as for example
all the first contact in the town of Vella manages to do, and that leaves us certainly caught when we understand what is really going to happen and then we check it in situ. Schafer has not only wanted to return to those details of humor that are so well given,
In the first part of the game we found that the scent of the old and extinct seal made in LucasArts defined still present through delirious characters,
humor in all its broad meaning-we have everything from pure Slapstick to Monty Python, acid sarcasm and absurdity more tronchante-, dialogues of double intentions (a pity that some have been lost in the Spanish translation) and a hilarity that invites to smile.
But the best thing is that Schafer is not satisfied with repeating himself, he does not want to bring us a work that is limited to following the path of the adventures in which he himself worked and devoted himself more than two decades ago, but he gives us a story that is it
becomes darker and more dramatic as it goes. The problem is that in its second act, after a super script turn, the story loses gas and continues without going back.
Yes, We have new tests. Yes, the puzzles improve. But we return to the same scenarios -some with novelties, but the same in essence- with another character and we realize that we have already experienced the good, that now everything seems repetitive.
