This week on Fully Ramblomatic, Yahtzee reviewed The Alters.
Transcript[]
"Hey, Yahtzee! We'd love to hear your opinion on the Switch 2, and Nightreign, and Deltarune Chapters 3 and 4, and why are you locking the doors?" Shut up, sit down, take off that stupid hat, and fucking look at this! This is what we need to be fucking talking about right now; it's called "The Alters", it's from the developer of This War of Mine, and unless the entire games industry collectively awakens a magic genie from a lamp in the next six months, I suspect it's gonna be my Game of the Year. Any comment you feel you need to make at this juncture? "Uh... I'm not actually wearing a hat." Oh, good for you! If this hasn't come across yet, I really like The Alters, and what phenomenal poor timing on its part to come out now, when all anyone wants to talk about is what hats they can put on their motorcycle-riding cow in Mario Kart. "Oh bugger, I'm gonna have to champion this, aren't I?", I thought, as I rolled credits on The Alters. I hate "championing"; it's a really awkward word.
The premise of The Alters is that we are Jan Dolski, last survivor of a life support fuckup on a corporate mining expedition to a barren alien planet, and now have to figure out how to operate the mobile base by ourselves with Mr. Sun going to rise on us in a matter of days and introduce us to his friend, Mr. Horrifying Radioactive Death. Being the least qualified member of the crew, who was only brought along so the bigger astronauts could bully him and tug on his unflattering mustache, the only reasonable option that occurs to Jan is to create clones of himself, but not just any clones; clones of alternative reality versions of Jan who made better career choices and less terrible facial hair decisions, in order to plug the skill gaps. For example, we need a research scientist to move along the tech tree, and fortunately, a choice Jan could've made as a younger man would've caused him to turn into Otacon from Metal Gear Solid, presumably a choice involving knobbing stepmothers. How exactly this process actually works and why Jan's alters pop out of the test tube wearing different outfits and haircuts is a matter best shrugged off as artistic license; what matters is that The Alters is both a very well-designed high-stakes management survival exploration game and a deeply compelling story about one man's emotional and psychological journey to beat impossible odds, explore his true potential, and resist the urge to find out what it's like to kiss himself.
In summary, The Alters plays like Moon, that Duncan Jones sci-fi movie, crossed with This War of Mine and Death Stranding, but gets away from those comparisons respectively by not starring Sam Rockwell, not being cripplingly depressing, and not being completely fucking incomprehensible. When we first arrive at each new area, we start out in Death Stranding mode, having to explore the planet's surface, seek out natural resources, take a moment to really appreciate the cold, forbidding beauty of the unspoilt alien landscape, before we cover it in industrial mining equipment and link it all up to base with electricity pylons and make everything look like the Birmingham one-way system. Then we go back to base and strategically assign our alters to the tasks of mining resources, crafting gadgets, and growing enough food to keep us all alive, and trying to complete whatever objectives need to be fulfilled before we can move to the next area and start the whole process again.
But what impresses me about The Alters is the intersection between the gameplay and the story; Jan's alters are all distinct people, who have understandably complicated feelings about being conjured into existence and forcibly enslaved for the sake of sustaining original mediocre Jan and his deeply unnecessary mustache. So you can't just give them a bed and a hydroponically grown carrot every day and expect things to be fine; you gotta keep them happy. And when you're picking your next alter from the shopping list, all it tells you is their gameplay benefit, not what their personalities are like. Miner Jan seems like a logical choice; he's good at mining, and there's a lot of mining needs doing. But I was regretting the pick after I discovered he's chronically depressed, and keeps having massive drama-filled falling-outs with his own limbs. And then there's Botanist Jan, very handy for keeping everyone fed, but turns out, he's the only version of Jan who didn't get divorced, and as such, is a total fucking wife guy; spends the whole game whining about his lost love and bringing the mood down at the group kissing sessions.
Each Jan has a unique story arc to go through that grant Jan Classic new perspectives that unlock new conversation options to make managing his relationships easier, in yet another very tidy gameplay-narrative intersection. I got genuinely invested in the friendship Jan builds with his selves, masturbatory as that sounds; it was cheering to recover a new DVD from a wreck on the planet's surface, 'cos I knew it was time for movie night with the lads. And of course, it wouldn't be a compelling narrative without adversity, so spoiler alert: at around the two-thirds mark, you're forced to make a horrible choice that results in permanently alienating at least some of your Jans beyond all reach of scheduled kissing sessions, and becomes your proverbial albatross cravat for the entire rest of the game.
Alright, let's squeeze out some criticisms. What passes for the combat element during explorey mode comes across a bit cheap; you have to shine a torch on wibbly-wobbly visual effects, possibly because the budget didn't stretch far enough to rendering actual enemies, although it is nice to see the chasey monster from Silent Hill: Downpour still finding work. There's some physics glitchiness here and there when moving around the planet; that's what happens when uneven terrain combines with no "Jump" button. Some of the Jans are a bit one-note and obvious, personality-wise; Scientist Jan, for example, has the emotional intelligence of a ratchet screwdriver, and just cannot comprehend for a moment how anyone could possibly enjoy things like fun or music or girls or socializing, or anything other than putting screws in things. And then there's Worker Jan, who I only brought to life to keep me supplied with spare batteries, and he turned out to be the fucking union leader, who spent the whole game diverting every conversation to signing people up for his socialist worker's rallies. Some Jans are definitely less useful than others; I really couldn't justify using up a valuable crew slot on Therapist Jan, not when the other Jans almost never had unscripted emotional problems, and his job was being adequately filled by the unlimited beer supply and the punching bag in the gym.
Still, I was playing on the setting where the management gameplay goes easier on you; maybe in the other mode, there's an argument every night over who gets to sleep with the life-sized cardboard cutout of Mother. But in brief, The Alters is that rare thing: a complex, ambitious, multifaceted game that just all fucking works, and I found appeal in every aspect, exciting planet exploration giving way to calming base management and compelling plot that deftly uses sci-fi concepts to tell a very personal story about growth and self-realization. Bear in mind, though; the plot could just very specifically appeal to me, because I too am a schlubby, hairy, middle-aged man who regrets some choices in life, and spends a lot of time very enthusiastically making friends with himself.
Addenda[]
- Champion of champions: Yahtzee Croshaw
- Between this and Pirate Yakuza turns out I'm very easily won over by big centrepiece musical numbers