It’s hard not to let the buzz around a game affect a review, and that’s never been more true in the case of Dustborn. Released around the same time as the ill-fated Concord and memed to death thanks to its “interesting” song, it was basically impossible not to have some kind of prejudice against the game.
We got the chance to check Dustborn out for a proper and fair review. I like to think every game has an audience, and since I’ve only seen a little bit of the gameplay spoiled for me maybe it’s not as bad as it seems? Find out in our Dustborn review!
Dustborn
Developer: Red Thread Games
Publisher: Spotlight by Quantic Dream
Platforms: Windows PC (Reviewed), PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series
Release Date: August 20, 2024
Price: $29.99
Players take on the role of Pax, an “anomal” living in an alternate version of the US where JFK’s assassin failed and hit his wife instead. This, among other differences, butterflied out into the US becoming some kind of weird conglomerate of separate nations.
This boils down to Pacifica (modern day California) and the United Republic which comprises most of the contiguous United States. Pax and her friends steal data from a group called the “Puritans” who are based in Pacifica, and are set to receive a huge payday if they can deliver it to Nova Scotia.
To make matters more difficult, Pax and most of her friends are what’s called “Anomals”. Anomals are individuals affected by “The Broadcast”, an event which left some of those exposed with supernatural powers infused in their voices.
Anomals are widely discriminated against, due to a belief that their powers can be used to deny the autonomy of those they use their power against. Pax and her friends do little to contradict this belief, especially early in the story.
In terms of gameplay, Dustborn is at its core a narrative roleplaying game similar to the popular adventure games released by Telltale. The combat is its weakest point and isn’t just poorly animated and designed, but also just feels… weird.
My first experience with one of Pax’s “Taunt” attacks is her yelling “BITCH ATTACK” and then sliding across the ground because her lunge or dash or whatever she was trying to do isn’t properly animated. Fights are just button-mashing and exploiting hit-stun between rolling to dodge.
You get a few abilities to mix things up, but overall the combat is a chore. This makes since given a majority of the game is spent interacting with dialogue and to be completely honest, Dustborn does a fantastic job with it.
Dialogue options appear and disappear as cutscenes play out, reflecting opportunities to interject that may pass you by in a natural conversation.
The game lets you preview the intent of a choice by tapping on it, in order to avoid situations where the choice ends up having a completely different tone than what you intended.
You can even look around the environment during dialogue in order to find things to use to help you, maybe ask a friend for help? Maybe there’s a detail that’s worth interrupting the conversation with. Dustborn goes out of its way to create an experience that keeps people engaged.
Of course, creating a good foundation for a dialogue driven game is one thing, compelling dialogue is a completely different thing.
Dustborn has all the technical features to make an absolutely amazing narrative game, it just doesn’t have a great narrative. Dustborn is a tragedy of wasted potential.
Imagine if you will, a fully voiced narrative game coming out while the demand Baldur’s Gate 3 has left for such games is still blazing hot. You put effort into creating an immersive way to present branching dialogue and choices, and then you throw it all away on a story like Dustborn.
Dustborn feels like it was written for an audience so specific as to be meaningless and I hope they do find this game because if the story actually speaks to you, this game would be your personal 10/10.
At the risk of seeming arrogant, I feel qualified to speak for a wider audience and say that the story of Dustborn is at best some of the most vapid dystopian adolescent fiction I’ve read.
This is coming from someone who absolutely ate up books like Uglies, The Giver, Truesight, and dozens of other stories about young people questioning the traditions of their elders in a post-apocalyptic future.
Dustborn provides surface-level takes about empathy and subjective morality and beats you over the head with obvious symbolism. I mean the main bad guys are called The Puritans and Justice, you’ve got neutered doll-like people on one hand, devoid of individuality, and then you’ve got uniformed police with helmets, also devoid of individuality (though not as bad as the Puritans).
The good guys are almost all textbook definitions of tokenism, what clinched it for me was the old lady with no legs in a floating gamer chair who gets to sexually harass one of the only male-identifying leads with impunity because it’s “safe horny”.
Add to that the Marvel-esque exposition spewed by the main characters, the sort of irony-poisoned monologuing from a piece of media that’s too embarrassed to own its story where characters are incredulous about the things they’re experiencing.
Ultimately, Dustborn is an amazing tech demo. Red Thread Games could do amazing things if they took the mechanics of the game and applied it to something… ANYTHING else.
