Review | Dread Delusion - More Than Just A Classic Throwback
I started thinking about a year ago that maybe the culture is too obsessed with retro games. There are about a million items on the market that make it very easy to play old games. To be nostalgic — to be reminded of the old days. I've fallen prey to starting and failing to maintain an interest in so many Super Nintendo RPGs. Sometimes, I’m forced to mull over a Forbidden Thought: are the contemporary indie games that remind us of the older games a better experience than the older ones? Well, sometimes.
We carry so much baggage. Maybe it's that very baggage that makes it difficult to enjoy anything anymore. Conversely, maybe I’m old. I’m thirty-four, so you might think that’s old.
What does this have to do with Dread Delusion? The truth about Dread Delusion is that it is so good, so unique and bold and generous as to change the world — had it only hit game players’ screens 15 years ago during the indie game boom or 30 years when it would have been released along the contemporaries from which it takes inspiration. Now, it’s just another priceless treasure gathering dust in the shadows beyond the stadium lights of the churn of games culture.
Dread Delusion is a first-person, role playing, adventure game about hunting down a famous outlaw in a high-concept, low-tech, fantasy world. So much of the world design, writing, and visual cues are of a crufty, old-school feel that the game will have you casting about for a time wondering what exactly you should be doing, not in the main quest, that’s well explained, but with the minutia, the items and upgrades. The designers have beautifully woven in the uncertainty of cranking up an ancient game you bought secondhand and feeling pleasantly lost in the lingo, certain it should have come with a manual. It gently urges one into the mindset, not just of a game player, but of an archeological game player — plumbing the depths of game history. And it does it without including anything so obvious as, say, a mysterious in-world instruction booklet to page-by-page collect.
It’s the sort of game where you’ll step off an elevator onto the roof of the first dungeon and a small notification will appear which reads “This looks like an interesting landmark.” I certainly agree, but why remark on this? This is a hint to use your cartography tools to make a map point, tools you don’t receive until much later. I ran around for five minutes trying to work out what that was. Do not change this! More games should have me scratching my head and saying “Ok, something to figure out later.”
Nothing like a canted warning sign to keep the adventuring spirit up.
The setting of Dread Delusion is one of unique strangeness, the kind of imaginative consideration we so rarely encounter outside Planescape. It uses its varied and wild world to flaunt bold takes on various retro concepts. We the player are welcomed in and offered cozy half-remembrances of the games of yore. With each and every of its many joyful artistic flourishes and ergonomically simple mechanics we are invited to consider aesthetics, plots, and gameplay the designers clearly have been thinking of as golden back-pocket ideas for a long, long time.
What I mean is, if you’re twenty-five or younger and you’re interested in Morrowind, play this. If you’re thirty-five or younger and you’re interested in Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss, play this. And then go play Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss.
Every choice the designers of Dread Delusion’s gameplay relates back to, and is strongly influenced by, the map. The story takes place in the crunchy, dangerous, flying archipelago of the Oneiric Isles, flying above a poisonous hellscape down below. Due to fantastic historical reasons the area of the world we play in is considered largely remote and frontier by the more well-traveled characters we encounter. The village that gets by selling prophetic mushroom tea, the kingdom of ennuient undead, the definitely-not-a-god clockwork king all feel both plausible in this setting but also only possible here in the Oneiric Isles. Such is the joy of a smartly imagined world. And the massive draw distance means we are free to take in the limited but beautifully considered landscape at any time.
The islands are largely under the control of a few vastly different factions. The anti-theistic Apostatic Union, the suppressed order of Wikkans, the mercs, the outlaws, et cetera. New Vegas-equsely, the player encounters and learns about each faction mostly by how the other factions talk about them. From the first moment, the player is taught to consider any character’s allegiances whenever receiving information of any kind. Apostatic Inquisitors hunt down and persecute the cult-like Wikkans. The Wikkans seek to reawaken old gods and reestablish themselves as powerful brokers between mortals and capricious deities. The outlaws want food and autonomy. The undead, bored. The relationships between the factions, our understanding of the world, and the impactful choices we make can all be tied back to these political powers and peoples and the lore-logical reasons for their existence and methods.
He’s fine. He’s just resting.
This is a rich tapestry on which to explore and conduct our adventures. The game begins with character design where we encounter our first glimpse of the story of the world as written. The backstory choices in character creation are intriguing and deliciously written. Our background filled in and a few stats familiarised, we begin. Play starts with us as a prisoner of the Inquisition, sent as a last resort to deal with a rogue mercenary and former hero who has designs of a major, realities-altering nature. Quickly, the game spills out into the countryside and every quest, person we speak to, and challenge have some relationship to the greater whole.
The first village we find is suffering crop shortages due to their tyrannical, sacrifice-demanding god having been slain. No more human sacrifice, also, the harvests are getting worse and worse. There’s a chance to reawaken this god through ritual, a willing sacrifice, a secret plot — all carefully presented to give the player the feeling of conducting a proper investigation. It can be tough if you are trying not to be a cop, everyone starts off knowing you represent, on some level, the Union. It’s thrilling and invites us to think things over without burying the facts in obscurity. The lore is rich but the problems presented to the player are communicated plainly and without distracting elaboration. This is excellent, we can reach the feeling of smartly roleplaying very quickly!
Regarding the play itself. There was evidently some heavy thought placed on what to elaborate on with statistical numbers and what to keep simple and game-like. For instance, picking a lock requires a six-sided die roll, like all clean and honest games the dice mechanic is given literal visuals. We count the dots on the side of the cube—boxcar! The lock pops open. While there are stats which impact this roll, the result is always plainly communicated to the player. And new lockpicks are gained like Quake items: sparkling, spinning 3d models dropped by downed enemies or breakable crates. This is the same for potions: dropped items, hotkey-able and reliable in their use.
All of this is described by elaborate hand animations. There are wide, slow, sword swings and a massive tome we open in front of our faces to cast magic. We think, obviously, about King’s Field. But it’s how Dread Delusion takes off from its inspirations, and where it goes, that makes it so wonderful.
In Dread Delusion we zoom around the map. The standard run speed makes us feel like we’re playing Quake, and the stackable Agility spells makes us feel like we’re speedrunning Morrowind. It’s the kind of perfect, game-loving, indie developer touch, leaving out limiters on this kind of speed. If the player yeets themself off the edge of some floating island, so be it. Due to the massive draw distance one will fall for quite a while, long enough to cast a spell of teleportation and feel massively cool zipping back to safety.
This an entire town and castle with a unique story — totally optional and totally worth exploring.
However, not that much is really unsafe in the isles. Aside from some optional, late-game areas, I never once felt like I was truly unprepared for combat. All monsters are sluggish and all their attacks are laborious. It’s easy to avoid danger. Plus, you receive no experience points for killing them, so if you can avoid it, avoid it. This may be a good time to say at least one critical thing: the combat is anaemic and useless. Maybe it’s how I spec'd my character but I was never pressed by monsters or enemies. You are never without several dozen potions of health, stamina, or mana — they are littered everywhere. Weapon upgrades were helpful and always seemed to be available when I needed them. And there are maybe… too many easy ranged weapons. I was so flush with poison shuriken by the end of the game I rarely swung my fully upgraded sword. But who cares? That ending…
Dread Delusion is a game you should play. You should play it and talk about it online and fan-fictionalise it on your blog. What the designers are bringing to the field goes above and beyond some minor functional quirks. In a year, a decade, crowded with RPGs, Dread Delusion deserves to stand out.
