Indie Game of the Week 389: Four Last Things

Earlier this year I checked out a graphic adventure game called The Procession to Calvary, named for the 1564 painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The game, created by Joe Richardson, co-opted (which I learned recently is a nice way of saying you nicked something) both its namesake and various other Renaissance era paintings in order to create a historically-confused point-and-click adventure game about rampaging around in pursuit of a villain to slay: the one person your bloodthirsty Amazoness protagonist was legally allowed to murder. However, it was actually the second game in what's been retroactively dubbed the "Immortal John Triptych", the first of which was this one: Four Last Things, released in 2017. (Incidentally, the third—Death of the Reprobate—is "coming soon". I have some informed individuals keeping an eye on its progress for me, which is to say that I hit the "wishlist this game" button on Steam and will hope for the best. I don't actually have any connections. Who am I, Jeff Grubb?)

As before, the goal is to complete a checklist of objectives and move towards an endgame whereupon the protagonist will receive a judgment from the almighty. The protagonist, who is unnamed here but later referred to as the titular Immortal John (he has a supervisory role in the sequel), has committed a whole buttload of sin but can't get his confession at the cathedral of St. Peter without rehashing those sins by terrorizing the locals due to some jurisdictional bureaucracy. Seven "items" to cross off a list, a moderate number of nearby screens (let's say just over a dozen), and around an hour of puzzle-solving is about all that's needed here. Some of the sins can be acquired almost immediately just by finding the right hotspot or person to talk to while others require many more steps, but given the game's size there's nothing too oblique about the nature of these puzzles especially with how clearly-defined most of the sins are. Like, some of the commandments might need a bit more finagling to suss out but getting too horny, tired, or pissed off is some pretty universally relatable shit.

The Procession to Calvary is a big improvement on this first game in so many ways but also clearly a descendant, with several of its running gags beginning here. One ever-present goof is that all the classical music heard in the game is diegetic, and you can sorta interact with the musicians hanging around in the background playing these melodies. Mostly by way of applauding their efforts or a capella-ing the sounds their instruments make (in a meta touch, the protagonist refuses to sing along with vocals the same way because "they probably mean something important"). Given how many Bosch paintings were Hieronymously donated to this game, expect to see some very unexpected things just hanging out banging out tunes; the uncanniness of which somehow doesn't detract at all from the world's sense of reality, given how Renaissance artists had some very strange ideas when it came to artistic approximations of children and animals (which, to be fair, are two things that are notoriously impossible to get to sit still) meaning every one of the game's tableaux tends to have a very surreal flair to it.

Other recurring elements include a big art gallery that features every real-life painting the game pulled from to create its many characters and backgrounds, sometimes stitched together from multiple similar pieces, which acts as both a neat little Renaissance art history lesson and a means to cover one's butt about any perceived plagiarism. In fact, the gallery even factors into a couple of the puzzles, so it doesn't just feel like an incidental tip of the hat. The highlight, as it was before, is the trenchant wit of the writing which veers from crude fart and piss jokes to introspective bon mots about the nature of sin and how annoying clouds can be (in a semi-valid observational way, not just a non-sequitur ornery Grampa Simpson way). Naturally, religion and its ubiquity in the Middle Ages factors heavily as well, and the game doesn't exactly shy away from criticism of it but nor does it decry it all as poppycock and horsefeathers. These games have, after all, shown that there are repercussions to being, to put it mildly, a bit of a bounder.

As is always the case when I give myself an adventure game to review like the corner-painting idiot I am, there's little specifically I can discuss about the game's puzzles and its funnier moments without spoiling them and detracting from the overall experience of anyone as yet unacquainted with the game but motivated by my words (hey, it's been known to happen) to check it out themselves. Suffice it to say, even if it is a bit on the short side—a good proof of concept in retrospect, given what it lead to—there's plenty to appreciate in this little morality tale about a guy with a big nose and an even bigger list of crimes trying to save his soul after a scary prophetic dream about original sin. Albeit, by doing even more bad things first. Given the way its successor builds on Four Last Things in every meaningful sense, I do wish I could have played it before Calvary (or thought to purchase it alongside its sequel to play them in order, which I normally do with these serial affairs; invoking my inner-Caravella as it were) but I can't claim I didn't enjoy my time with it here and now.

Rating: 4 out of 5.