The
first time I rounded a corner in Sunset I just about fell out of my chair,
startled by my own reflection as I came nose-to-nose with a glass door and a
low-res woman with dead eyes, barely blinking, peering at nothing. It was
creepy, but I got over that. What I couldn’t get past was the feeling that I
wasn’t the real Angela Burnes. Sunset’s protagonist comes in two forms: one is
a character in the story, and the other is a reflection of the player and game
designer, a distortion. The real Angela, I think, is the one who exists without
me. When I took control, I felt like a fraud.
Angela
is an young African American engineering graduate and activist who becomes
stuck in a fictional South American city during a US-backed military coup. She
makes ends meet working as a housekeeper for wealthy art collector and
bureaucrat Gabriel Ortega, whom she never meets in person. Sunset explores
their relationship, how they relate to each other and the unrest outside, and
how that divides and connects them. Once a week, I assume Angela’s body and
wander Ortega’s penthouse completing chores while he’s out—clicking on things
that need doing—and poking through his belongings. I can also reply to his
notes, and most things I do can be done ‘warmly’ or ‘coldly’. I can arrange his
shoes playfully or neatly. I can help myself to a drink while cleaning up, or
just put away the glasses. I can express my presence, leave kind and
flirtatious replies to his notes, or be invisible to him.
Sunset
isn’t really about investigating like in Gone Home, where everything has
already happened and you’re piecing together the past from what’s left behind.
It’s more like pausing an in-progress play and messing with the set dressings.
I deduced some things from Gabriel’s possessions, but anything I missed was
filled in by Angela’s voiceovers at the beginning of each day. The unnatural
mouthfuls felt over-rehearsed, like she woke up and pre-planned her thoughts
about “people organized by hierarchy, aimed at each other with purpose, instead
of breathing and flowing through each other, like a city’s supposed to feel.”
Angela and me
Being a bit overwritten is fine,
because the plot is interesting—it follows the rise of an oppressive new
government and the rebels opposing it—but Angela’s thoughts seemed to come from
a different person than the one I was playing as. When her brother became
involved in the revolution, for instance, she deduced that Gabriel was angry
about his actions, and in turn she was furious at him and his privilege. And
yet I walked around leaving kind notes and gently warming his austere
penthouse. I didn’t understand why she would like the man at all, or show him
any affection, but I wanted to see if my warmness changed anything. It doesn’t
seem to, and you won’t find Telltale-like moral conundrums or branching paths.
Sunset itself also seemed to push me
toward the flirtatious Angela. The blue, cold options were dull, while the warm
options were creative and smart—it was hard to make Angela humorless, because
she didn’t seem that way, but the warm options didn’t fit either: she’d never
met this man, she resented him, so why did she seem so fond of him so quickly?
I felt a
little uncomfortable in Angela’s shoes, like I was acting against her will
to satisfy my own hopes for the story. I don’t think that was the intended
theme—my relationship with Angela and the game—but I still enjoyed the plot and
what feelings I did share with her. I felt lonely when Gabriel left town, even
though the apartment was empty whenever I arrived anyway. I felt comforted when
I put out a still-smouldering cigarette and tidied other evidence of life. It
felt good to be kind to him in his depression—whether or not that’s what Angela
would do—as I tried to drive the pair’s relationship toward something caring. The
two are divided by wealth, power, and ideology, and discovering their values,
or how they approached the same values differently, was fascinating enough that
I wanted to see it through, even when it started to drag.
That happens about halfway through,
when the plot slows and then gently rolls—with a couple of spikes—into a
foreseeable conclusion. At that point, some of the days really did start to
feel like chores, especially when I got vague tasks like ‘clear the area in
front of the windows.’ The apartment is pretty much made of windows, so that’s
just a mean joke, making me shuffle around the place looking for a hotspot to
click on. And even though I rarely chose the ‘cold’ options, getting the
interface to show me them was finicky, adding to the sense that I wasn’t
‘supposed’ to choose them.
I
liked being in the apartment, though, even after I was bored of checking off
Ortega’s to-do lists. Sunset nails the 70s design with keenly observed light
fixtures, furniture, and architecture, as well as fantastic playable records
with properly space age stereo equipment. At one point I just sat down and
listened to music, enjoying the pink and orange light in the approach to dusk.
Angela’s growing relationship with the space is the most interesting
relationship in Sunset. As it progresses, the disconnect between her internal
dialogue and affection starts to resolve, and I can see how she’s become
attached to Gabriel's quirks and passions.
Given
that a central theme is the juxtaposition Gabriel’s values with the burning
city he holds them above, the city itself is a bit underdeveloped. The
buildings outside look like cardboard models, and don’t fit in. I encountered a
few other off-putting visual flaws: an untextured object, glassware that looked
like it melted spacetime, and overzealous orange lights that caused the
staircase to turn radioactive. I also had a problem with the mouse disappearing
(turning off my second monitor fixed it), but Sunset mostly ran just fine for
me, and its visual flaws were rare, if acutely noticeable among the otherwise
pristine light and lines.
Sunset
delivers an interesting plot and interesting characters, but I often felt like
an invader, like I should have been reading Angela’s memoirs rather than adding
notes. But it tries to tell a story in a way I haven’t experienced before, and
I’m happy to have played it, and to be thinking about how young interactive
storytelling is and how it might evolve. I also appreciate that Sunset’s
creators have put writing about things like civil rights, class structure, and
intimacy into my game library—sat among a mostly homogenous set of themes,
Angela represents a happily broadening spectrum of characters and ideas in PC
gaming.
Need To Know
Reviewed
on: Windows
7, Core i7 @ 3.47 GHz, 12GB RAM, Radeon R7 260X
Play it on: Core i5, 4GB RAM, Radeon HD 6970/GTX 570
Alternatively: Gone Home, This War of Mine
Copy protection: None when purchased outside of Steam.
Price: $20 / £15
Release date: Out now
Publisher/Developer: Tale of Tales
Multiplayer: None
Link: Official site
Play it on: Core i5, 4GB RAM, Radeon HD 6970/GTX 570
Alternatively: Gone Home, This War of Mine
Copy protection: None when purchased outside of Steam.
Price: $20 / £15
Release date: Out now
Publisher/Developer: Tale of Tales
Multiplayer: None
Link: Official site
Source : PC Gamer
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