LET'S EXPLOIT THE WILD GREEN YONDER
Greedfall is the sixth role-playing adventure from the small, French studio Spiders. They are known for their attempts to "fill the void" left behind by their role-models at Bioware, who have seemingly abandoned the genre for lucrative action games. I have not played Spiders' previous RPG:s, but know by osmosis their games have shown some early promise, only to end up lacklustre. That same description, incidentally, comes to mind as I search for a concise way to summarize Greedfall.It contains all the goods of a solid old RPG. Things like fantastical beasts, magic, pauseable action combat, romanceable companions, multiple sidequests and a gripping storyline all makes it a worthwhile endeavor for genre fans. It forsakes a big open world in favor of a subset of smaller maps. Production values are fairly high, with quality voice acting and beautiful colonial environments inspired by 17th century paintings.
To further the goodwill, the game implements some quality of life improvements I've been dying to see in games in general. The possibility to manage inventory and companions during loading screens comes highly appreciated. I also love the possibility to instantly return to the quest-giver upon completing a task.
A TALE OF DIPLOMACY AND DISEASE
For all its noble intentions, however, somewhere around the halfway mark Greedfall starts losing my interest. It is hard to pinpoint exactly what goes wrong, but somewhere around there the RPG mechanics stops mattering, as all your desired skills and talents max out. It also keeps insisting on connecting all its elements to the main story and its central themes of colonization and environmentalism. In a sense that's commendable, but it loses much of its personality in the process.
You control De Sardet, a diplomat of noble standing, and all quests relate to his or her profession. With very little leisure time, you are restricted to the uptight decorum of ambassadorial duties. The dialogue first takes some time to get used to, and soon thereafter your character starts coming across as stiff, boring and eloquent to a fault. And nothing you do can change that.
The same goes for your five companions -- one for each of the game's five factions -- who all serve their master's mission. You rather quickly exhaust all their dialogue, and then they just hang around, fight the odd fight and remark on some of your choices. When formalities even seep into the possible romantic subplot, I start losing interest in this universe. Experiencing it through the eyes of these dullards is no fun. While it makes the game seem sophisticated, I miss the spark of adventure and the complexity of the human soul.
But the uniform approach also comes with its fair share of advantages. The setting is one of them. Greedfall takes place on the uncivilized, unexplored island of Teer Fradee, inhabited by natives living in a close symbiotic relationship with the Gods of nature. They speak in a language developed by a linguist specifically for this game. Animals and humans all have physical traits influenced by the surrounding flora, with wooden roots protruding from different body parts like horns. It's a sight to see.
The well-written story, albeit not very original, is the flagship that dominates the game altogether. The mainland, where you start the game for a lengthy prologue, is stricken by a plague called the Malichor, which is threatening your entire home country. Your task is to sail alongside your cousin, who is to become governor, to the new island and colonize it, all the while looking for a cure to the Malichor amongst its buried secrets.
Other nations and factions vie for control of the island as well. They all have their own innate cultural predispositions, like scientific snobbery or religious zealousness. And let's not forget the natives, who do not look kindly on the new arrivals. This is where your diplomatic skills come into play, as you single-handedly have to maintain your nation's relations with all of them. It sounds complicated, but disappointingly enough boils down to the simple task of solving as many sidequests as possible.
A LACK OF CHARACTER
With very little space to cultivate a true depth of character, the "role-playing" aspect of the game is limited to numerics and gameplay statistics, i.e. leveling up skills, attributes and talents. While this affects the way you approach quests, it still makes me question whether Greedfall needs the "role-playing" at all. The story is fairly linear, and exploration outside any questline hardly matters - it only rewards the player with crafting materials and mostly useless equipment to sell. In fact, I'm pretty sure just following all the quests will make you explore the entire map.
I also believe the modern, third-person perspective approach does not entirely befit Greedfall. A more traditional, isometric viewpoint might have better served the gameplay. Direct control of exploration feels tedious as the environments starts repeating and blend into one another. A more indirect "click-and-forget" control method with better overview would have remedied that.
Besides, the bland character design and animation adds nothing to the dialogue. In scenes involving more than two characters, they often mistakingly look at a person they're not addressing. The well-staged action cutscenes add some excitement, but they are too few and too far apart to fully justify the heightened immersion of an intrusive, third person camera.
GRINDING ITS GEARS
Greedfall eventually comes across as a directed experience masquerading as free and open. You only deviate from the set course when you need to resupply at a store or craft new gear at a workbench. Most sidequests, if not all, lie somewhere along the main questline. As I went off the beaten path early in the game, I stumbled into the territory of a powerful, spear-throwing beast. After several failed attempts I finally defeated it, and felt aptly proud and accomplished. It was only much later I realized I'd done things out of turn. That boss was meant for the endgame.
This illustrates how easy it is to become overpowered in Greedfall. By sticking to your class and specializing in a select few skills, you should be able to breeze through the game. Combat can be dealt with in a number of ways, with a handful of moves, loads of customizable weapons, some magic and alchemical solutions. The lack of options within each class, however, makes you stick to the same guns all the way through. And the low enemy variation does not warrant much experimentation.
It is, however, refreshing to see the numerous ways to tackle each quest. A couple of skills allow you to cultivate a silver tongue for peaceful negotiation. Should that fail, you might utilize back-up stealth and alchemical skills to disguise yourself, or put enemies to sleep with sleeping potions. Failing all that, there's always bribery, companion skills or combat. But even this starts to grind its gears long before the end. As you specialize in a couple of skills, you'll use them time and time again to resolve most situations.
SUMMARY
GreedFall goes for broke with its noble intentions, but lacks the werewithal to get there. A lack of rare sights, interesting characters and branching lore eventually numbs the interest garnered by the great prologue. The game fails to develop its core gameplay loop past the early stages. In much the same way the story unfolds into lectures we have heard a thousand times, the incessant backtracking, talking and fighting slowly but steadily grinds down to tediousness and mediocrity.Still, I get the notion Spiders achieved everything they set out to do. Problem is, for me that is not enough. I should like it more, but it somehow seems smaller than the sum of its parts. The writing alone, albeit good, is not enough to fill the void of everything left underdeveloped. I left the game feeling like I'd seen all I could see, which was not much given the roughly 50 hours it took me to almost exhaust it.
The great RPG:s that inspired it, like Dragon Age and Jade Empire, utilized diverse, not always connected sets of quests, characters and lore snippets to hint at larger universes. The Greedfall experience is so concentrated to its plot it feels like a corridor shooter by comparison. You only need to decide in what order to tackle the quest corridors, which is a questionable approach to a role-playing game about exploring a brand new continent.
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