Obduction is not for everyone. Just as their predecessors were not. A great criticism that I could read on Steam is: ” I do not know where I am, I have no idea what I’m doing “, but not in a pejorative way. The user, in fact, defines its pros and cons. Beca
use in Obduction you travel to a world populated by puzzles where you will have to deal with practically extraterrestrial machinery. Often you wi
ll find yourself touching levers trying to make something happen, a button to shine or a gear to turn. That is the Obduction dichotomy: you move slowly through a world without knowing completely if you understand its rules .
But let’s get in situation. The premise of the game takes us to another planet. Or another dimension. A walk through the woods, a strange light, a flash and we find ourselves in a place as strange as wonderful, where buildings from different periods of humanity are combined with the impossible, all in a dome that seems to replicate and maintain the climatic condit
ions of the Earth, embedded in a strange planet. We will not be alone … or almost. We will find holograms engraved with real image of characters that tried to create a community in this abandoned place. Some of them are still here, in fact. And they will help us take the first steps.
A story that manages to capture our interest, and although it picks up when it has to do it, it fails to maintain the good rhythm and b
alance between narrative and puzzles, always giving priority to the latter over everything. It makes sense that this is so, since this type of adventure always prioritized the puzzles above all, but it is missing some conversations and holograms more along the way that help us maintain that interest and try to connect the points while we explore the scenario .
In the precise moment
The scenarios are a blast that hide some of the most convoluted puzzles you’ve seen in recent years.
But we’re not going to cheat you in your analysis. Obduction is the most obtuse and sparse game in guiding the player you will find in a long time.
If The Witness was betting on a wide area that kept in its bottom a path of ordered puzzles, with that subtle guide in the form of cables that connected each new panel, Obduction is a neural network of puzzles that demands you to be in the right place in the indicated moment with the only help of your intuition. When the bulb is illuminated, it is able to give you that satisfaction
of having solved something truly searched. When not, the feeling is very similar to that of a classic graphic adventure, where going around trying everything with everything and crossing the screen with the cursor was the order of the day.
If you were a Myst or Raven fan it was probably what you were looking for: a gigantic puzzle that is crumbling little by little, where the solut
ion is never near the track. The thing goes further when you realize that the dome where you start is just one of the gigantic areas that populate your impossible world and, as Obduction grows, more complicated it makes remember all the areas and possible points to follow in the adventure.
Is capable of the best and the worst by maximizing punishment and reward
The walk, however, is enlivened with impressive prints of places that can only arise from the imagination of good artists, who have not o
As in Myst, all the puzzles are pieces of a gigantic gear that is revealed little by little as you unite them.
And even with this deployment, Obduction does not forget where it comes from. So much that it allows you to vary between the free m
ovement mode (common first person movement) or the classic mode in which we advance in jumps, like the original Myst. Although beyond this curiosity, it is possible that this method is also integrated to be able to explore
Obduction in a more comfortable way in VR . The game is designed to adapt to virtual reality, but unfortunately its implementation has not come with the launch of the game and it will still take a few months to have it available for the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive glasses.
The truth is that, look where you look, it is very difficult if not impossible to give a verdict to a game like Obduction. It is too intertwined with the past and the tastes of the player to judge it with perspective. It is capable of the best and the
worst by maximizing the punishment and reward, where the punishment goes through some really long and tedious walks until you find all the shortcuts and the reward for feeling that you have really managed to force one of the strongest safes. complicated of the current video game. No help, no guides, no clues. Only ingenuity and time .
