So I finished As Dusk Falls and had a bit of time to reflect on it, read some reviews and impressions, and I think there’s a lot to talk about this game format, its unique artstyle and presentation and how it’s kind of the perfect game for Game Pass, but also how the devs tried to make a coherent story with all the branching choices you make along the way… And how it’s really hard to do.
I feel like Xbox had the right idea to promote this game. It’s unique and offer something akin to a TV show with grounded characters and with a lot of choices that really matters and that you can see the direct consequences. But…
But I think that’s where the limits of the genre are : there’s just too much impactful choices that the ending kind of fall short and depends a lot on the choices you made and how you reacted to the consequences.
So I wasn’t really playing “fair” I guess : in my playthrough, I got Dale killed by the sniper, manage to not get the family hurt in the motel, got the father (Vince) in the car with the Holt family, but I let Jay open the door of the car so I can run away in the woods. And…I think that’s it for the first part.
Then the second part should have been way more impactful with Zoe’s trauma (what trauma ? the shootout with the cops coming out from the bus ? the motel woman that got killed ?) and the different characters crossing paths… But the story kind of falls apart here. Jay got arrested in the mountain (I think I messed up) and got the death penalty years later ?? I guess that’s the closure Zoe gets from all that.
So I think I got the bad ending here…It’s a bit anticlimactic even though I quite liked that I could mess up and still get a proper ending.
In the end, I get it now why it’s so hard to make a story driven game with that wide range of branching choices. You basically have to rewrite every scene many many times to accomodate every tiny choice you make to really impress the player, or it don’t even matter.
The devs really tried to make that happen and I think it works pretty well overall, it’s just that the second part of the game make all these choices kind of futile. There’s just too much characters who don’t matter in the end. Only two important ones are Zoe and Jay.
I think I will replay some parts of the game to see the different endings. There’s some stuff I really wanted to try along the way to see the results.
So what did you think about it ? What was your important choices for the two families ?
I realized it was only 6 chapters after playing the first 3 and decided to finish it. It was mostly fine. I enjoyed the single play through well enough. But I don’t think I would play through it again. The act of playing it, at least in single player, isn’t compelling enough to do multiple play throughs.
I really enjoyed the game, I played it all through the cloud, both on xbox series x and a tablet at work and the touch controls were actually better than a controller.
My playthrough everybody survived, although I messed up with Jays girlfriend Vannesa, but I felt some story things had been left unanswered, mainly what happened to the sheriff and the part
granddad had played in the past (was he Jays real farther?)
All in all an enjoyable game.
Really enjoyed this game, but def felt the 1st book was more exciting than the 2nd one. Even though I didn’t mind the art style I still would’ve preferred if there was some motion for the storytelling. However, I do find the story itself better than most other games in this genre. I hope Microsoft greenlights the sequel and a bigger budget would be nice
Thanks, I mixed it up/ forgot about the names while writing my post. It’s corrected.
Yeah, there’s a lot of unanswered questions. Something tells me they cut a whole chapter/book. It surely felt a bit short.
I was really digging the story and was expecting a lot from Jay/Zoe story/ending… but then it wrapped up and I felt let down a bit. I also would have liked to know what happened to Vince and Michelle.
Anyway, I’m doing another playthrough and it’s really cool to see the other paths. Some scenes are radically different from my first playthrough. Some stuff can get really deep, like I read that the cop entering the Motel to buy some soda, can get shot if you make some specific decisions. Michelle can also get shot in the motel. There’s a lot of stuff that can happen that alter the scenes in some meaningful ways. I like the depth they were going for there.
Beat it twice. Kinda stuck in limbo wrt my thoughts on it. LOVED the story it was telling and how it was telling it, but there also were major story arcs that seemed to inch towards climax and then just disappeared or had huge narrative skips.
Sharon (Ma) and Paul’s arc should have shown them figuring out how to get into Dante’s secret bank account, getting the money, discovering some sort of mystery around what Dante was up to and who he was really working with/for, and then finding a way to sneak out of the US and getting to Cuba. Instead, it literally jumps directly to them being in Cuba.
The way Vince’s arc concludes is also super rushed. Tyler’s endings seems ok since it made sense how one gets from the cabin scenario to him ending up in prison, but the end with him working on an oil rig should have had some more intermediate storytelling to lead there imho. Even if just a tiny scene of him. The stuff with grandpa and Zoe and Jay was ok as that was clearly a cliffhanger by design.
Just feels like the game was unfinished content-wise to me. Which rly sucks since the stuff that is there is rly, rly good. Almost wish they would have released Book 1, then taken a month or so to do release Book 2, then another month to release Book 3. Maybe with a couple extra months they coulda fleshed those missing parts out more.
I was surprised how well it works as a MP game too. The social element normally kills storytelling for me but it somehow didn’t here, even with two totally different groups I played with. Could have been cool to have more scenes where players had to work together or solve more puzzles tho.
I also just rly like that the story was down to earth. It wasn’t about saving the world for the billionth time in a game, it was about the character narratives and those really did make every small decision seem to matter. It had all of us in both groups spending 10mins or so after a chapter looking thru the tree and wondering aloud what could have been. So as a simple mechanic that tree worked super well for me.
I hope whatever they do as a follow up will carry over our decisions for Books 1 and 2 akin to how the Mass Effect series worked. I noticed in the KF spoilercast that Greg asked the producer to blink twice if his theory was right that the future additions to the story will be prequels and she legit did immediately blink twice after he said that. lol
I feel the same. It seems like the story got too complicated for them halfway through so they rushed some characters development that would have required a lot of planning/dev time.
And there’s just too much characters imo. One example : the kid, Ash, is just there for one thing : if he tells the cop about the cabin or not. It seems odd to include that scene when you think about it.
I feel like there’s so much potential in what they were doing. It’s the first time where I felt like I could really mess with the story to the point of ruining the ending, but not as some binary choices like in most games. I can’t remember any other game going there really.
And the game tracks a lot of stuff you do. There’s some added lines in the motel if you found out Michelle was cheating on you and left the appartment for example. It’s the small things that gives you the illusion.
I’m waiting for some announcement about DLC or Director’s cut.
My wife and I played through it twice together, and that alone is a big win for this game because my wife is not a gamer It was funny because on the first playthrough my wife didn’t react quick enough on one of the prompts when Vince was fighting with Dante who had the stun gun, and sure enough Vince literally ended up dead. We also really screwed up Jay’s arc with Vanessa and everything else on the first playthrough, so we got a pretty “bad” ending. Our second playthrough last night was a “good” one where Vince actually survived and managed to achieve his dreams, and Jay ended up at the cabin talking with Zoe which was much better of course. I absolutely loved this game, and my wife and I would be thrilled to have more story content to play through in the future. These are the types of awesome experiences that I would love to see more of on Game Pass in the future, as it helps people like my wife who aren’t core gamers have fun with others that are.
It was funny because on the first playthrough my wife didn’t react quick enough on one of the prompts when Vince was fighting with Dante who had the stun gun, and sure enough Vince literally ended up dead. We also really screwed up Jay’s arc with Vanessa and everything else on the first playthrough, so we got a pretty “bad” ending. Our second playthrough last night was a “good” one where Vince actually survived and managed to achieve his dreams, and Jay ended up at the cabin talking with Zoe which was much better of course. I absolutely loved this game, and my wife and I would be thrilled to have more story content to play through in the future. These are the types of awesome experiences that I would love to see more of on Game Pass in the future, as it helps people like my wife who aren’t core gamers have fun with others that are.