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Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons
PC (Steam)
Unique but Flawed
4/5 stars
“Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons” (“Brothers”) is a difficult-to-define Indie game developed by Stockholm, Sweden-based developer, Starbreeze Studios in collaboration with Sweden-dwelling Assyrian film director, Josef Fares.
Presentation
“Brothers” is a game that fails in every way to make a good first impression. A cursory glance at the game reveals Unreal Engine-powered visuals with plenty of jaggies and overly simplistic character models that would not look out of place on the PlayStation 2 or Gamecube. Indeed, even the early character designs seem bland, with the main memorable visual aspect early on being the fact that the younger of the titular brothers has hair that looks like someone upended a lovely flan or crème brûlée on top of his head.
Fortunately, the talent of the graphics team soon becomes much more apparent, as the brothers venture further from their home, through environments strongly evocative of Scandinavia or Eastern Europe, leading from their simple, medieval civilization into a realm of myth and mystery. After the initial unimpressive area, the brothers spend most of their time in absolutely gorgeous environments, which are liberally dotted with stone benches that allow the brothers to sit down for a bit so the player can absorb the epic majesty of the game world. Likewise, past the bland characters the brothers encounter in the civilized portion of their world, the mythical creatures they encounter in the course of their adventure look fantastic, with unique takes on several well-established beasties.
The audio in “Brothers” does do a better job than the graphics at making a first impression… at least with the soundtrack, which is evocative and beautiful throughout the game. The voiceacting, however, is a bit strange. There are numerous voiced scenes throughout the game, but nobody in the world of “Brothers” speaks a comprehensible language. Instead, they speak a fictional gibberish, which isn’t subtitled at all. Over the course of the game, some of the words of the language become apparent, as do the names of certain characters, but the initial fog of confusion circling around the use of a fictional language without subtitles does nothing to help draw-in a player who has just started playing.
Technically, “Brothers” is pretty solid. However, the PC version seems to have a significant, undiagnosed problem with controller support. The game’s store page on Steam even admonishes potential buyers that they will need a controller in order to play properly, yet I was unable to get “Brothers” to accept input from any of my Xinput controllers, despite the fact that the game clearly acknowledged their presence by showing Xbox 360 icons in every menu, etc. After fighting with the game for over an hour, I eventually beat it into submission using Xpadder to feed it keyboard inputs via my XBONE controller, which left me not wanting to play again until a week later.
Story
“Brothers’” narrative is a fairly straight forward Hero’s Journey following the exploits of Older Brother Naia and Younger Brother Naiee as they set out from their small, medieval village in order to reach the World Tree, where their village doctor says they will find the only thing that can cure their sick-and-dying father. After losing their mother to drowning a short time ago, the brothers will do anything to save their remaining parent.
As they make their way out of their village, asking everyone the encounter where they might find the World Tree, the brothers soon leave the boundaries of civilization. Their first encounter with a creature of myth instantly severs their connection to the mundane world and sends them into a world of mystery.
“Brothers” is filled with increasingly interesting encounters and even features a few weighty plot twists toward the end. The wordless, anti-narrative storytelling, while intended to be emotionally evocative, instead is just confusing at times, leaving the game world just as mysterious and vague to the player as to the brothers themselves.
“Brothers” is, unfortunately, an incredibly short game, clocking in at approximately 3 hours. This particular duration shows the influence of a film director in the development of the story, but simultaneously makes the experience feel a bit rushed. It is inconceivable that the brothers could make their way from their home village to the World Tree on the other side of reality and back in such a short time. I don’t know if it’s good that the padding of plodding, uneventful travel has been cut out of “Brothers” or if it’s bad that such an otherwise great game isn’t allowed to show off what it can do for a bit longer.
Gameplay
“Brothers” is an incredibly unique game that obviously draws at least some inspiration from older games like “The Lost Vikings,” but is otherwise content to forge its own path. As such, “Brothers” is a rather tricky game to categorize. It doesn’t neatly fit into any Action subgenre, simply due to the sedate pacing of the gameplay, while the occasional platform-hopping or rope-swinging puzzles would otherwise exclude it from the Adventure genre. The lack of any meaningful character improvement as the game progresses also leaves it coming up short for classification in the Action/Adventure genre.
Ultimately, though, I feel that the focus on puzzles, on-rails platforming sections, and the lack of dexterity or reflexes required to complete it leaves “Brothers” solidly in the Adventure camp. However, it is still unlike any other game I’ve played.
The control setup in “Brothers” is the most unique and noticeable aspect. The player controls both brothers at the same time. The left analog stick and left trigger control the Older Brother Naia, while the right analog stick and right trigger control the Younger Brother Naiee. Naturally, the controls are simplified to movement and an ‘action’ button, since keeping track of two characters simultaneously would be a bit overwhelming otherwise. The brothers must stay within a set distance from each other and typically must interact with environmental objects in order to help each other navigate the environment.
Despite the fact that 90% of the gameplay involves getting from Point A to Point B, there are actually a handful of enemy encounters that could be considered boss battles. These encounters are all still puzzle-based instead of reaction-based.
Overall
“Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons” is a lovely, unique Adventure-style game that, unfortunately, squanders part of its incredibly brief duration with bad first impressions. Anyone who presses on through the prologue, however, will have the privilege of experiencing a visually breathtaking, non-narrative storytelling experience with pleasant, puzzle-driven gameplay.
Presentation: 4/5
Story: 4/5
Gameplay: 4/5
Overall (not an average): 4/5
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