Paradise Lost Review
Developed by: PolyAmorous
Published by: All In! Games
Available On: Xbox, PlayStation 4, & Steam
Materials & Methods
Reviewed on: Xbox Series X
DISCLAIMER Review code provided for review.
Introduction
Have you ever sat and wondered, what if history didn’t happen exactly as it did? What about in particular World War 2? That last point has always been an interest of mine, leading me to enjoy media like The Man in the High Castle and Wolfenstein, each having their own ideas about “what if the bad guys didn’t actually lose?”. Most stories cover a resistance group fighting their way back and eventually toppling the Nazi regime. Not many cover what would happen if there were NO winners. What if everyone at the end of the Second World War enacted a Scorched Earth policy, and a nuclear apocalypse did, in fact, take over the world? What would happen then?
Now, the Germans were known to be pushing the boundaries of science; albeit at the cost of lives and without regard for safety beyond their own. The horrendous treatment of humans deemed to be beneath them has led to the enactment of numerous laws and regulations worldwide. The same can be said for their engineering front. In almost any property you consume where World War 2 continues, there is one common thing. The Germans/Nazis continue their abhorrent ways to advance their society. PolyAmorous envisioned that future but in a different direction. What if the Nazis had time to create fallout shelters and elaborate cities underground in case everything went wrong?
Results & Findings
1980, about 15-20 years after the bombs dropped across the world and engulfed everything in a nuclear winter, is the world that the main character Szymon lives in. Twelve years old and just after losing his mother, Szymon decides to explore a Nazi bunker located somewhere deep below the snow in Poland. Him hoping to try to find hints of his father and more about his world leads him into the unknown where he doesn’t know what dangers are awaiting him. All he has to go off of is a picture of his mother and a man standing in front of a “4” in a facility. Szymon’s quest leads him into the depths of the bunker and the dystopian cityscape abandoned underground. A beautifully crafted underground cityscape with office buildings, waterside restaurants, shops, labs; just about everything a normal city would have except located hundreds of feet below the surface.
This whole premise is what drew me initially into Paradise Lost. I am a big fan of alternate history media. However, my fascination with what was in store for Szymon felt like it hit a wall after one particular moment. There is a lot of world-building throughout this vault, from memoranda instructing staff on how to operate the facilities to computers documenting a resistance plotting and succeeding with the downfall of this society. It’s fascinating… when you could read the notes. There were numerous items to pick up, but many of them were either left in German (not translated) or didn’t trigger a verbal prompt at all. There isn’t even an achievement or some story tied to these objects. After picking up a few objects and being burned by either clunky controls to even pick up the object, not being given a small voice line about wonder/bewilderment, or something telling me these objects are in any way important to the story, I just stopped. Which ultimately begs the question, why are they even in the game, especially when most DON’T add to the worldbuilding?
That question tends to carry over to the main story of the game as well. There is a “twist” that happens about an hour into the hour-and-a-half-long game. While interesting, the twist doesn’t feel like it was at the heart of the story. The “event” at maximum felt like it was just inserted to spice up the story that felt so bland up to this point. Instead of making the story more exciting, it somehow makes the story even blander. And this is in major part due to Szymon’s voice acting. Szymon’s life up to this point has been only in a cave, trying to survive the harsh never-ending winter in the outside world. Then, when entering a vault with luxuries and devices that he hasn’t seen before, I expected bewilderment and excitement from the voice actor. Instead, all I got was apathy. Even for the very few gut-punchy moments, Szymon’s voice actor made him sound like he doesn’t really care, which is a real shame! The more that Szymon acted like he didn’t care about what was going on, the more I noticed I was searching less. After 30 minutes in, I was just speedrunning the game just so it would end faster. If the main character doesn’t care what’s happening around them, why should I? A couple of new directions or redone voice lines would’ve done Szymon so many favors for how he appeals to the player.
Another draw was the promise and hope of puzzles being in this facility, and solving them would leave to more mysteries or answers of the goings-on. There were no puzzles, no searches for items to unlock doors, not riddles or secret mechanisms that led to secret passageways. Nothing. The lack of puzzles broke me and my experience with Paradise Lost. Watching the trailers, I had such high hopes that this would be a thrilling alternate universe game where maybe residents would still be around this facility; I’m solving some grand mystery that leads to an even bigger reveal, or even puzzles that slowly brought everything back to life. SOMETHING. But I got none of that. My own hype may have gotten the better of me, but I was hoping for SOMETHING to fill out an interesting world to explore that somehow feels so empty.
Now I find walking simulators fun IF there’s the right balance of exploration, story, world-building, and how the character moves throughout the world. At the end of the day, only one of those four boxes got checked. Movement is key in walking simulators since it’s just about all you do. However, even just walking around feels too cumbersome. Interacting with objects feels like a chore. Picking up objects looks like Szymon has never held anything in his life. Starting with walking, Szymon is extremely slow. Slower than the average NPC you walk with during an escort quest. There is a “run” option, but even that feels more like a brisk walk than an actual run. Occasionally, Szymon needs to interact with an object. Instead of being a quick cinematic, there is a quick time event that feels like tedious busywork to do simple actions, like pulling a lever. The developers on their website said they added QTEs to make the game more accessible. However, the actions added feel more cumbersome than their intended purpose! A quick cinematic of just pulling the lever instead of clumsily completing a QTE that doesn’t like to work correctly half the time would’ve worked out so much better. I’ve mentioned before that some objects and papers are interactable; ranging from toys to pictures, to general objects from a recent time lost forever. None of them trigger a prompt from Szymon. There’s no confusion as to what he’s finding, no talking about these objects he’s probably never seen before. It just feels so… so odd. Additionally, Szymon holds these objects so awkwardly, almost to the point where it looks like he’s breaking his arm just so you, the player, can see the other side of something (even if it’s pointless). These are the three biggest game mechanics, but they all add up to an unenjoyable experience at the end of the day.
Finally, Szymon interacts with computers to help an overhead voice become more connected to the facilities and inadvertently discover why this dastardly lavish structure built to “last until the end of the apocalyptic winter” became abandoned; however, even that doesn’t get explained well. What’s even weirder about these computers is a semblance of choice with how these experiences play out. Now, I only played through Paradise Lost once, but I did watch a play-through to see if there was any real change to the story if I changed the selections I chose. There wasn’t. These computers did tell the most interesting parts of the story. Too bad they were few and far between.
Discussion
Paradise Lost had lots of promise. With beautifully crafted environments to explore and interesting world-building, the alternate 1980s Poland should have been fun to explore. Not because of excitement, but because of curiosity about what happened to the people who lived in an abandoned bunker for twenty years. However, that fun quickly gets bogged down. Bad voice acting that sounds worse than being phoned in, graphical glitches, a patchwork story, and ultra-slow gameplay even for walking simulator standards ruin what could’ve been, at minimum, an interesting game.
