Night in the Woods

There's nothing that mentally ages and separates me out of my generation quite like a piece of media that is fawned over while I think nothing but, "I don't get it." Since the first time I caught wind of Night in the Woods via its successful kickstarter, I stepped backwards into an almost completely unearned petulance, like a child or, more accurately, a cantankerous old man. I like interactive fiction as much as the next person (given the general audience of video games, I probably like it more), but the storybook presentation mixed acridly in my mouth with the supposedly mature themes it would be tackling. It didn't wholly represent it, but its horror staging and anthropomorphized cast were a personal touchstone for the sub-subgenre of narrative-focused games that feel unreliable and toothless in their quest for saying something about youth and coming-of-age. I've been down this road before, and it usually only ever leads to saccharine sentimentality or thematic aimlessness. Big words for someone who hadn't played the game, right? Assumptions aside, my curiosity and a small handful of trustworthy recommendations finally broke me down into getting it.

Soon after a (surprisingly trendy) text-adventure intro, you assume the role of Mae Borowski, a 20-year-old college dropout who finds herself back in Possum Springs, the town she once called home. As I was getting acclimated to the game, it took some effort to memorize that Mae was out of her teenage years. After all, she is a small cat-person wearing a scrappy graphic tee, and her inherently curious disposition that's mechanically assigned to her only sought to further this notion. Normally, a character's age, even the protagonist, isn't relevant enough to actually factor into an experience, but an important distinction to make with this game's contemporaries is that it is about an adult and her adult friends. It isn't so much the young adult fiction it lets on to be as it is fiction with adults who happen to be young.

Cognitively speaking, the cast is a mature group, and, as such, they don't have to squabble with many of the neuroses brought on by growth; however, in each of them lives some undernourished side of their personality. With Bea, there's a stagnant and cynical life in service of her widower father's business. Gregg and Mae both share a penchant for vandalism to ease their stress from working (in Mae's case, not working) in Possum Spring's deteriorating system. The game makes the claim that the individual's psychological setbacks tie into their situations, a stance which, as we go along, becomes more complicated to wrestle with.

The game assumes a pacing similar to that of a life-sim, having you live Mae's daily schedule. It quickly sets in that the town you inhabit is there as a checklist of sorts, having you visit each screen's inhabitants to progress an individual story, or experience ambient chatter about the town while autumnal leaves fly around the ground. As a metaphor for the doldrums of small-city life, it succeeds as far as it can go before its spacious repetition starts to wear you down. You'll eventually have to make the decision of whether or not the sluggish commute to the edges of the available spaces are worth whatever nuggets of verisimilitude they provide.

Personally, I experienced as many unique pieces as I could for my initial playthrough, but as the game's pacing kept itself on track, I subconsciously decreed that what I saw was everything, and that there was nothing else to see, so why should I go look for it and waste time? I eventually learned that I was wrong; in fact, near the end of my first playthrough (by which I mean the epilogue), I encountered entirely new characters that capped off their own stories in a way that assumed that I was familiar with them. I was not, and scrolled through their already cryptic dialog with nothing but confusion. I'm still left wondering if their appearance was a bug, or if the idea that you can experience a story in media res is what Infinite Fall wanted all along. Either way, I had no goddamn clue what they were on about.

Luckily, brighter praise is given to the substantial encounters with the main cast. The unique spins that Mae and her friends' interactions provide are solid tools to convince you of their situations. Gregg's rambunctious attitude eventually leads to a playful (if completely dangerous) knife fight, whereas Bea's listlessness is punctuated with menial errands and quiet car rides. The tones of these vignettes vary wildly, and almost always make a point to shift with the attitudes of the characters. My favorite example of this is with Bea and Mae's argument after their quiet dinner in the Santello household. Mae keeps digging into why Bea's okay with her clearly untapped potential, which provokes her into lashing out at her friend for her ignorance. As the player, you have no way to prevent this from happening; you can only customize Mae's screwup. The following day, I didn't visit Bea almost reflexively.

Being in control of Mae, we get to see first-hand how she feels and thinks. Like many of her ilk, she's neurotic and capricious. It's more than implied that she has some sort of personality disorder, and throughout the game we get to the see the highs and lows of it all. She's also understanding in ways that many probably aren't, and her incessant charm via self-deprecation and whimsy eventually made me crack. Her light phrasing and in-jokes she develops are all comfort food for someone like me.

More than most fiction, Night in the Wood's dialog aims especially for a natural, informal feeling. Sentences will often be a few words long and devoid of most punctuation, as if Mae and her friends are perpetually text-speaking to each other. Even with these limitations, Infinite Fall will get across ideas ranging from aphorisms to major epiphanies, albeit with a thin layer of the "Woah, dude" mentality. Some might find the accentuation on casual speech a bit tedious, but as an outcast, small-town American who was once their age, it certainly evokes the way that we talk. Additionally, whenever the game eschews its own rules, its impact is much more noted (e.g. the poetry recital in the library).

In addition to the character-focused interactions that fill this game, at night, Mae will more-than-likely wander a cryptic dreamscape that is clearly working on another logic. Here, you're tasked with discovering certain things, or simply finding the endpoint of the setting. These parts largely abandon the game's narrative focus for simple 2D platforming, and while its take on the old formula is inoffensive, I'm left wondering how important their purpose was. At my most critical, I'm not entirely convinced that the game's wholeness hinges on their existence. Sure, their impressionistic view of things is colorful and playful, but the repeatedly drastic shift in both pacing and, frankly speaking, enjoyment are harder to justify. We are constantly engaged with Mae's perspective, so is viewing her unconscious mind in such a rigorous way as valuable as it seems? I'm unsure.

For the first 2/3rds of your playthrough, the wake up / explore / hang out / sleep loop will be the exclusive focus of your time. It isn't until most of the way into the game that the most drastic plot point even rears its head, and with its introduction marks a shift into a more deliberate setup. The lackadaisical interactions with Possum Springs are tossed out in favor of plot-specific objectives as Infinite Fall employs the use of filmic cuts in lieu of walks. It's jarring, to say the least, that this game's newly found plot-focus sidelines character developments (though not entirely, I should note). As a mystery hook, though, it does provide intrigue.

The horrific elements are effective throughout this portion of the game. There'll be moments where you're unsure of what will happen next, when suddenly the tension finally severs into a frantic escape. Honestly, I find it hard to be scared of 2-dimensional games, but the use of backgrounds & foregrounds, timing, and agonizing unknowns was a pleasant surprise. Even though the game's interests might've skewed from my favorite parts of the game, at least it could effectively keep my attention.

At this point in the game, you're probably thinking, "Wasn't this about twentysomethings learning how to cope in a crumbling system built for things bigger than them?" You're not wrong. Night in the Woods becomes a Scooby-Doo mystery only to lead into major plot revelations that attempt to contextualize the entire thing with a gift ribbon made of cosmic horror. This particular section of the game has been widely contentious, and its not hard to see why. The game's staging was already mid-revamp by the time that the climax comes in, and a new, supernatural element attempts to grab everything at once as if to say, "don't you see that all of it was for this?"

To an extent, it is thematically sound. Possum Springs is a noticeably decaying town, and the story up to now has hinged largely on the idea of past vs. present through both environments and conversation. While it could've been possible to point to an abstract concept like "the times" or "political force" to have the characters work out their situations, the game apparently wanted a villain. Enter Space God and its cartoon cohorts. Not to say that their motivations are completely unbelievable; after all, Space God and co. speak the same talk that small-town conservatives do, and given recent political events, it's not hard to imagine that such things could have a grave effect on burgeoning youths. It just feels so... cheap to ascribe all of these things to an omniscient force. After hours of special moments with friends, especially. Mae might've been irrevocably changed from her encounters, but it doesn't change the fact that these folks had issues that reflect reality. As far as I know, there's no Elder that our future can simply bury into submission.

In one of its most shocking displays, the game ends almost as if nothing happened. The main cast spends the epilogue doing what they normally do, albeit with some new secrets. In a certain scene, they do the equivalent of looking at each other while doing a deep exhale, as if to say, "crazy night, huh?" Despite the complete uncertainty of their futures from both the inevitable progression of life and the looming of angered gods, one must imagine Mae and her friends happy. Infinite Fall does, at least.

If we're gonna be honest, I had difficulty deciding whether or not this game was more suited for 3 or 4 stars. If Giant Bomb's rating system was on a 10-point metric, it would be an easy 3.5, but it isn't, so I had to make a judgement call. My feelings might be mixed, but the successes it manages, while understated at times, were powerful. This game is one that clearly benefits from multiple playthroughs, and I, admittedly, didn't give it that (though, in my defense, it's mostly because I don't know if I'm committed to). Maybe this is just me hoping for a moment where the loose ends tie together in a way that is both satisfying and sensible, but this game's ideas will almost certainly linger in my head for a while longer.