Has it ever happened to you to find some of the things you like the most in the same video game? Well, that happened to me when I learned that Nobody Wants to Die is not only a detective adventure with cases full of brainy deductions, but also leans on the style of one of my favorite movies of all time, Blade Runner, and has a neo-noir aesthetic that suits it phenomenally. That is basically the best summary I can give you of this video game, and after seeing its first case in detail I can confirm that it is worth taking it into account for the coming weeks.
It is developed by Critical Hit Games, a modest Polish studio that, however, wants to surprise with a AAA-style first-person game with avant-garde graphics. You can tell as soon as you see a few seconds of play, with a finish so cutting-edge that you can’t explain how you hadn’t heard anything about it until now. Its creatives say that it has taken six years to make it, but here we have it and in fact it arrives very soon, on July 17. It’s going to be the best time to check if its promises are true and we’re facing a surprising title (as it seems).
Welcome to the research of the future
Nobody Wants to Die takes us to a fictional New York, a futuristic dystopia set in the year 2329. As such, the game seems to have a very powerful narrative background. Topics such as immortality, the transfer of consciousness between bodies and a series of other issues are dealt with that not only give rise to important philosophical debates, but also support a story full of very dark secrets and a murderer related to the city’s elite. As the creators say, this is a corrupted world inspired by Blade Runner, and you only have to see a few screenshots to see it.
The protagonist is a certain James Karra, an investigator who has surprised me by how well he is well acted. He has bad tempers, he drinks a little, he is a bit foul-mouthed, but the important thing is that he has a special talent for making deductions. Well, that and a host of detective gadgets at your disposal. It has a special vision to highlight clues, a camera to capture evidence, an X-ray viewer and, in short, everything that can be expected from a professional who works in investigations in the 24th century.
Surely, the most surprising thing is the reconstruction, a tool that recreates crime scenes. How? Well, basically traveling back in time to know all the details about how it happened, for example, a murder. Thus, you can control each event that occurred to the millimeter, moving forward, backward and stopping time at the precise moment when you think (or intuit) that you can find a clue. This is how I discovered the first act of the game, located on Fifth Avenue. An art deco aesthetic scenario helped me to check the playable functioning of Nobody Wants to Die, which I have already been told does not rely so much on the interrogation of witnesses as on the purest and hardest fieldwork, finding evidence on your own.
Thus, it is very important to be very observant, explore everything very well and make use of the futuristic tools you have. In this sense, the atmosphere of the game is essential to understand its essence. The visuals absorb you and take you into this dystopian world, while the music (completely ambient) encourages your thoughts and deductions to flow. It is very well thought out and executed, with an assistant named Sara who supports you from a distance with dialogues and valuable contributions. It’s all very cinematic, but at the same time it leaves players an important space for interaction.
The atmosphere of the game is fundamental to understanding its essence
I wanted to stress this in an interview with the creators, and they told me that the progress of the game is indeed based on visiting crime scenes, collecting data and making deductions to deal with new cases (which are probably connected in some way). This, I was told, will give about 8 hours of play, a figure that is not spectacular but that fits the proposal. It is not a traditional adventure nor does it have action, but investigations in very limited spaces where, of course, we will have to put all our detective attention to move forward.
The proposal has surprised me because I had not seen anything like it, at least with this level of detail. It looks like a small game but with tremendous ambition, and for the nearly 20 minutes of gameplay I’ve seen, the execution is simply spectacular. The studio says some of its employees previously worked on big-budget games, and Marcin Grembowicz (Lead Writer) himself wrote scripts for television. It shows. Nobody Wants to Die has spectacular graphics, a surprising sound work, but above all a most convincing script.
The dialogues flow as we progress, giving a cinematic touch to what happens, and articulate a story that will be important to check if it convinces a lot or just a little. It promises, and even more so after you have known that we will have decisions and aspects that will make us conflict with the events that are narrated. But for that we will have to discover the final game in its entirety. I, of course, am very much within the proposal, because it is not every day that quality detective games are received, and even less with these production values.
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