Also for: Playstation 4, Windows, Xbox One
It looks peaceful and cute, but don't fall for the visual style of the open
world adventure Fe, developed by Swedish studio Zoink and
released as part of the EA Originals program. It belongs to the brand
of artsy, visually oriented games that strives to avoid writing, and
instead utilizes visual language like world design and color coding to make
the player curious. You are supposed to look with your eyes and make sense
with your sensibilities, and figure out the world for yourself.
Too bad, then, that this world is overcrowded with bioluminescent, distracting
fluff. It's everywhere. Sometimes I don't even know what I'm looking at. Although the hues change from purple, to orange, to green and so forth,
the effect is always the same. This ubiquitous cuteness becomes the game's sole
quality, even in supposedly exciting moments when you're hiding from deadly
cyclopean monsters or losing newfound allies to the enemy. Fe completely lacks
any tonal dynamic, making the experience dull and monotonous. Just looking at
the screenshots bores me.
You control the fox-like creature Fe, sprinting, leaping and gliding around
this low-polygonal, glowing landscape as he tries to understand it. In the
opening cutscene he flies through the air alongside some fellow foxes, and
crashes onto the planet surface. His friends are nowhere in sight, and this is
apparently not home. So you spend the early stages of the game learning to
communicate with strange animals like deer, birds and worms through the
power of song. By finding the right tune you harmonize with them and learn
their skills.
In this sensitive way you can recruit temporary companions, who'll teach you
about new ways of transportation. These disappointing lessons are all
basically slight variations of one another. The first one turns some flowers into
fans that propel you into the air. Another one catapults you into the air.
Yet another one catapults you even higher into the air. This helps you solve
platforming puzzles, but a lack of inventiveness makes the progression
underwhelming.
Pretty soon you run into your first enemy, a dark cyclopean force called The
Silent Ones. Unless you're careful, they might trap you with their gaze,
further strengthening the ocular theme of Fe. With no way of fighting back,
stealth is your only shot, unless you can enlist help from some strong
animal companions. This is a neat idea, but its shoddy execution makes me
glad it is hardly used at all. How exactly to make one of those animals
follow you is anyone's guess - carrying a tasty fruit is supposed to do the trick, but for me it didn't work reliably.
The sound design is splendid, particularly the string soundtrack that sometimes even
breaks through the cuteness to convey a soothing quality. When Fe tries to sing, he
sounds funny - kind of bizarre and totally alien - until he finds the right tone. By singing next to some strange monoliths
you uncover engravings of previous events, showing some pieces of lore.
Instead of written language, Fe uses iconography for you to decipher. This
could theoretically help you connect with the world, but I didn't personally
care enough to give it a second's thought.
A few other collectibles allow you to briefly control a Silent One in
first person mode for story reasons, displaying a glimpse of their actions
and motivations in the process. This tells you little you can't glean from
spying on their actions from bushes, but I might have missed some crucial
information, simply because I forgot about these collectibles among all the
visual confusion.
The world is dull and literally too dark to make much sense of, and the
landscape is designed in an unintuitive, repetitive way that is very hard to
navigate. More often than not, you need to check your map for objective
markers, because the valleys are just littered with cute, glowing
vegetation. All the while that tree you need to climb is there in clear
view. You just don't notice it because it shares the dark shade of the
landscape.
It's just so hard to know anything for certain with Fe. It suffers from
vagueness and a lack of direction. You never learn the purpose of your
visiting the planet. What is your end goal? Are you trying to find a way
back home? Are you scouting ahead? Or are you just trying to find your peers
who crashed with you? Discovering an alien world could be intriguing
enough, but a wordless, unnecessary story forces you to progress in a
certain order. And the story beats should be stronger than just: "This way
is open now, follow your new companion there to see what happens!"
When Fe sings to harmonize with an animal, it's illustrated by two shining
globes slowly joining right between the two of them. I get the feeling Zoink
hoped such harmony would extend through the screen to captivate the player as
well. It's commendable, but absolutely no meaningful communication took place
between me and Fe. This must be the first time I played a game
completely unfazed from start to finish. With no emotions beyond the facade of
cuteness, all I could really do was go through the motions.
Comments
Post a Comment