The release of Dispatch has shaken up some of the industry’s assumptions about episodic releases. After initially being the next big thing in gaming with Telltale absolutely killing it for years with their episodic games its downfall led developers to start streeing clear of the format. Dispatch though showed that there’s still merit in that approach, the hype cycle extending well beyond the initial week or two that it normally would. So it was interesting to see both sides of that equation wrapped up in Arctic Awakening; a game that was initially conceived as episodic and then changed to a full release only to hit the shelves some 3 years later. Had they waited but a few more months would they have changed back again? Hard to say, although I will admit that at least keeping the episodic beats for the narrative was a good choice overall.
Just another supply trip, that’s all it was meant to be. Flying over the Alaskan wilderness I was met with much of the same snow covered landscape that I’d seen time and time before, the endless white stretching out past the horizon. That’s when it hit and suddenly the plane is in more than one piece and my companion, Donovan, is making a break for it with his parachute haphazardly strapped to his back. I try to wrest control of the plane as best I could but to no avail so I hoofed it out the back in the same way as my partner did. Now here I am, in the endless white itself, wondering how I’m going to make sure both Donovan and I make it back home.
The obvious comparison to make here is Firewatch as it most certainly takes inspiration from in terms of narrative, mechanics and of course visuals. That same kind of stylised realistic aesthetic is ever-present with everything feeling grounded in reality but having that kind of animated, dream-like quality attached to them. The visuals are absolutely at their strongest when you’re taking in the wider set pieces and wide vistas with the lack of detail becoming more apparent when you’re up and close in the more tight environments. The music and voice acting are standouts as well helping to humanise this strange world that you’ll find yourself in.
From a gameplay perspective Arctic Awakening is your standard one-step-up from walking simulator adventure game, giving you a number of straightforward puzzles and narrative choices to keep you engaged throughout the game’s playtime. Most of the time it’s just the simple “Collect X number of Y” kinds of things or perhaps looking for a set of different switches to throw but for the most part they’re all things that you’ll be able to solve without too much difficulty. Along with your helpful robot companion (who will give you relentless hints if it sees you’re taking too long to solve something) there’s relatively few blockers to progressing the main narrative forward at any point, which is refreshing to see.
The game mentions early on that your choices will have impact and whilst it’s possible that they do my impression was that it didn’t have as much of an impact as you might first have guessed. For many of my choices I took the level headed, sensible option and whilst that seemed to craft the main character (Kai) in the way that I wanted him there were times further on in the story where he’d start to act completely incongruent to the way I’d been crafting him. Now, I get it, actually giving players meaningful impacts over the story is a challenging thing to do at any scale but the fact that it was so noticeable that my choices weren’t having that much of an impact says a bit about how you should set expectations with players.
There are other signs too that the game possibly had grander ambitions that needed to be cut in favour of actually releasing it. The survival mechanics for instance, something that actually had me wondering whether or not I actually wanted to play this in the first place, whilst there and definitely work in the way that’s intended are basically completely optional. The only downside to not eating or drinking is that your vision will get blurry but that can be cleared by meditating at a cairn which, funnily enough, can be done quicker if your starved/thirsty than it can if you’re fully fed. To be sure it’s easier to do if your meters are full but it is noticeably slower.
The narrative is solid overall, steering clear of the usual traps of extended exposition and setting itself up well with ample opportunities to build the world out through natural conversations between all the characters. The aforementioned disjointedness in some sections aside you do get to see real growth in all of the characters through the game’s playthrough and, whilst you’re ultimately left with an endotron 3000 style ending that choice at least has some weight to it.
Arctic Awakening might not be revolutionary in any one respect but what it does do, it does well. Calling it Firewatch in the snow is selling it short as it dives deeper and longer into its characters, giving them far more time to build than Firewatch ever did. But the inspiration lines are clear and, in many ways, it does a lot of things better. However the advertised weight of choices was oversold, leading to some incongruencies in the narrative, plus the completely optional (but not advertised as such) survival mechanics do give the devs some room for improvement when it comes to their next title. That being said whatever GoldFire Studios gets up to next, I’m here for it.
Rating: 8.25/10
Arctic Awakening is available on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S right now for $37.99. Game was played on the PC with a total of 7.6 hours playtime and 65% of the achievements unlocked.
