I thought it might be useful to add some game reviews to my blog, but not your standard game reviews. Not even Yahtzee game reviews, though I do love them. These are game reviews focusing on the writing, including story, dialogue, localization, spelling/grammar, etc.

Yesterday I snagged Daemonica from the value bin at Direct2Drive. All of the reviews said that while it was just ‘decent’ in most aspects, the story and quality of writing were quite good. I’m afraid I’m of a different opinion.

Before I start yammering on, a few lovely disclaimers:

1. I’m not a big adventure game player. The last adventure games I really got into were the Indiana Jones one that LucasArts put out in the 90’s, and of course Monkey Island.
2. I couldn’t find a definitive answer on whether or not Daemonica was US-made and then shipped to the Czech Republic, or whether it came from the Czech Republic and was localized.
3. So far I’ve only played through Acts I and II of this V Act game.

And now my rebuttal to those disclaimers. (I never said they were legitimate!)

1. I’m not a big adventure game player. The last adventure games I really got into were the Indiana Jones one that LucasArts put out in the 90’s, and of course Monkey Island.

Not an excuse. An adventure game, especially a low-budget one like Daemonica, is chock-full of text, specifically dialogue.

2. I couldn’t find a definitive answer on whether or not Daemonica was US-made and then shipped to the Czech Republic, or whether it came from the Czech Republic and was localized.

People are paid specifically for this purpose. Case in point: The Witcher. They contract hired the ladies from Writer’s Cabal for the sole (monumental, might I add) task of localization.

3. So far I’ve only played through Acts I and II of this V Act game.

If you’re not going to show good writing in the beginning of the game, where exactly did you plan to show it?

Alright, those gripes aside, that basically paints my picture of this game. From a standard game review standpoint, it’s a pretty fun game. The ‘murder mystery’ mechanics are great and the game is just challenging enough to make it feel like an accomplishment when you get the next clue. Travel – something that is typically a sore spot in adventure games – is nice and zippy here. Once you ‘find’ a locale you can click it on your map and teleport there. And the whole demon-possession-necromancing-the-stone thing is a pretty cool concept. It’s like Pushing Daisies, but with Lucifer voice acting.

But I’m not here to talk about any of those mechanics. My focus is on the writing.

Story

Perhaps when those reviewers said the quality of writing was excellent, what they meant was ‘the story is excellent’. I have to give credit where credit is due: Daemonica definitely gets the whole murder mystery thing down. In fact it plays like one big game of Clue. Not like the movie with Mr. Body, but like the game. Where people are way too serious about it so there’s no attempt to physically knock off the little player pieces with the tiny pewter cast weapons.

You play as Nicholas Farepoynt, a Hunter who has come to a small medieval town to investigate the murder of a young woman. The mayor is already quite convinced that he has brought justice to the girl by having her fiance hanged. But in his infinite wisdom and foresight, he wants Nicholas to find irrefutable proof that not only did this man kill his fiance, but also a young couple who went ‘missing’.

As you begin to investigate you find a rather disturbing web of town politics that leads you off of one path only to be swept into another one entirely. Every character in the game is involved in the story in some way, from the cryptic doctor to the sniveling land baron’s son.

Spelling/Grammar

In about eight hours of gameplay I’ve found only one mistake; a typo. Considering just how much text is in this game, I consider that extremely commendable.

Dialogue

I saved dialogue for last because this is where the game truly suffers. Allow me to illustrate:

That block of text is in response to one PC node. At the very least it should be broken up with [CONTINUE] designators. The eye gets fatigued and the mind gets bored reading like this. It also totally destroys the illusion that this is someone speaking. No one would ever talk like this, without logical pauses, so we can’t ‘hear’ it in our head, and without any VO it quickly loses our interest.

Worse still is the fact that it’s written like narrative. In fact, it’s written like adventure game narrative. This character is telling you what happened – explaining it as though he were a manual. He’s got a bit of personality, but it’s met with a brick wall of stale exposition-like dialogue. I’d expect to see this from a writer who isn’t experienced with writing dialogue, but not someone who’s getting paid to write a game script.

At first I gave them the benefit of the doubt. I assumed that since this was a low-budget game, they didn’t hire a writer proper and instead had a designer (or hell, just any old body) whip up the script. But MobyGames contradicts this assumption, so I’m at a loss to excuse the quality.

Edit: In my haste to write this review, I neglected to scroll down. The person credited as the writer of this game is also a programmer. This is why you should hire writers, folks! I’m not sure it can be made any clearer!

I know I’m being quite harsh, but if this is what reviewers think of as ‘quality writing’, then it’s no wonder the industry perceives writers as superfluous. And for a game made in 2005, especially a game that relies so heavily on its script, this game is rather hard to defend as a writer. Though I can say if I were the one writer tasked with drafting up the hundreds of thousands of words needed for this script (and likely at the end of development, with no room for rewrites), I would have a rough go of it too. So I have to commend the writer of Daemonica – you took what you had to work with and made the best of it.

Edit: I’ll commend the guy for what he’s done, especially since he’s a -programmer- and uses a whole other side of his brain in his daily job than what’s involved in writing, but hey… anybody can write! Just sit the programmer down and have him whip out the script!