Unknown 9: Awakening Looks Bad

These months are pretty brutal for relatively high budget games, first Concord, then I don’t remember and now Unknown 9. Current estimates say this game cost 50-100m. Yesterday I watched a trailer and then a stream from the developers on Steam and then I checked out Twitch too, because I couldn’t believe what I was looking at.

Firstly they present the game as mysterious world, epic stories. What I see is that their idea of mysterious world is to locate it to a desert town with bazaar and people standing around and some mystical powers that don’t make any sense. The world is mundane and bleak, I can’t see it there.

To rate graphics is a bit tricky because of YouTube and streams compression, but some parts can be assessed. To be sure I checked gameplay from PS4 version of The Order 1866 which I played years ago. The Order has much better fluidity of movement and framerate or animations (?), camera is better, colors are much darker, but more pleasant, characters look better, but the environment looks worse, but combat is better. Yeah, when I heard Unknown 9 is being released also for PS4…that sucks. But even PS4 has graphics card equal to RTX 2070 (no raytracing).

I don’t know how else should I say this, it looks like shit. Some people compare it to Mass Effect Andromeda, which maybe make sense. I played it in 2019, but the game used to freeze after 1 hour on the arrival animation. But I played and finished it in 2021 and animations are fixed and good and femryder can be beautiful. And the worlds were, well, quite empty, but also look really good and are fun to explore with the vehicle. Some people criticize the main heroine which looks and sounds like Anya Chalotra (Yennefer from the new Witcher series). If she is beautiful or not, that subjective. I like her. Some make fun of facial animations - well….that’s fair. It is not as bad as you might read or see in YouTube drama videos. But it is not 2014 or Xbox 360 era anymore and this is a main character. And we all see all these Unreal 5 demos pretty regularly. Dubbing is good, music…wasn’t there? Sound effects, not sure, I’d say they are low quality, but audio from streams are not good either. Death screams are hilarious and sound like from 80’s B action movie from Hong Kong. As usual I don’t like the colors of the game. While it is good to see a different color palette, something is off. And plants look like from 2005.

Combat looks disgusting and very boring. Great, there are woman enemies. Everything looks like very ugly version of steampunk. Man, even airships are ugly. Enemies have gas masks, wear weird jumpsuits or uniforms (maybe, their sense of fashion is very bad), they shittalk and say stupid lines like “come get me”, “where are youuu”, “I’m coming for you” or “give up”. This is cringe as fuck. You cannot present the world as epic, have serious setting, serious story and then this. Sure, in Cyberpunk 2077 they shout similar lines, but too many people in Night City are psychos and reckless, so I’d argue here it makes sense. This is not playfullness, this is exactly why I avoid almost all superheroes movies - dumb dialogues. But superheroes movies are presented as fun and in baseline they are, this game…isn’t.

The whole magical world is some mishmash of cliches without any considerable depth. But why is she able to have this powers? Why are others like from World War 1 steampunk version? What is her motivation to do anything? Why does she even bother to fight and kill? What will she gain? This looks like yet another game, where “we are resistance, we fight because we fight. Do not ask details”.

I read Sweet Baby Inc were lead narrative - and the result is yet another nail to the coffin of good western games, I think they should reconsider how they build worlds, characters and stories. Or just stop, leave it to somebody more competent. Maybe wishes of their employees are just becoming true with Sweet Baby Inc. Employee Admits Goal Is “Burning The Games Industry To The Ground”. I have mixed feelings with attitudes like this. Yes, it was probably just shit talking and showing power to other people. Or maybe not and then there is no place for such people in game industry. And I won’t pay for burning the game industry to the ground. Look, games for me are a form of escapism. I used to think “wow, all these games are so diverse in thought and so good”, but looking back I think I just got to the best of games and therefore I haven’t seen that many bad games.

Honestly I would like to play a game where there are mighty desert cities, happy people, city full of life, beautiful gardens, …. But this is yet another world which looks postapocalyptic or a world in decay. Enemies are even more without character than mercenaries in Uncharted, Cerberos mercenaries in Mass Effect or marines in Halo games.

I’d estimate this game to be 5/10, maybe 6/10 and if you never played a game, you are a child or new to fantasy, it might be good. Me personally, I won’t lose time or money playing yet another depressing (dark fantasy) and postapo game with vibes and looks from 2012. It’s worse than mid Forspoken.

Man, I just don’t see it these days. I’d like to see new games and be proud, but I just watch new releases from time to time and have no expectations anymore. I don’t preorder, I don’t buy if I’m not convinced. I don’t care anymore. I play old games like Halo or something I haven’t finished yet. What would be an alternative? I watched Wukong for a bit and that game looks it could be fun. Or Rise of Tomb Raider, Uncharted: Lost Legacy, Risen or Risen 2: Dark Waters.