1000xRESIST

Okay look I know what I said, and I’m already going back on that, but I just had to get a few things out because I would 1000% forget them. This game is pretty interesting - I like that occasionally you have text decisions to make… and you cannot be certain that any of the choices would result in a different outcome. The writing and voice acting is working in tandem, they are both existing to feed each other on another, more ethereal plane and I really cannot stress enough that this is a core part of the experience. Hearing a cast, seeing a cast, reading a cast that all may or not be the same, and then knowing when you are with someone new. It can be beautiful and haunting.

The graphics are beautifully aliased. Edges are jagged and lines aren’t straight, but advantageously. The devs know this and they use this to create some spectacular Op Art patterns. There is a lot of gorgeous scenery on display here and a lot of it verges on psychadelic in a Bridget Riley sort of way. The NieR influences are pretty apparent, but for the story that is unfolding before us, possibly a work of Pandemic Art, it makes sense. One of the main characters bears a striking resemblance to Accord from Drakenguard 3, even goes so far as having the name Watcher (Accord is an “observer”). Considering Drakengard and NieR is also a about a rogue Pandemic, I’m curious to continue these parallels.

When I first heard about this game I was hesitant to play it. The more you hear that something is inspired by or influenced by one of your favorite works (or any popular work of art) an alarm goes off and the battle between sincerity and authenticity rages on. “Will this be done with sincerity or are they putting as much fan service into this as possible with a wink and a nod?” But 1000xRESIST has been nothing but sincere and has an intense identity all its own.

The first few hours of the game have you “communing” with the Allmother - a semi-mythological figure in this society of women who all look the same - and as you relive these memories the story of the past begins to unfold and I was convinced that this entire world was the made-up story of a teenager who was trying to use this device to process her being a shitty person and dealing with the resulting trauma of that.

One of the final communions done is presented in a way where the narrative exists as text in an environment and you navigate through the story in a side-scrolling or first-person or top-down perspective, depending on the beats (I love a forced perspective shift).

But now that I’m in the 7th chapter, some things have come out, the opening scene where the Allmother takes a knife to the back has been more or less explained and now I’m not so sure if this isn’t happening, if humanity wasn’t wiped out by a plague that was caused by giant alien overseers, that the only reason humanity has trudged forward was because one girl became the subject of a terrible scientific hail mary to clone her immunity but ended up just giving her the keys to a never ending clone making machine.

And now we’re in the future - a big, gross, double dystopian future where the characters have changed but the roles are changed severely. And even less hope exists. We’re now even further in the future, into a time jump, and the society has evolved yet again. We are a different main character, possibly the reincarnation of the first main character and we’re attempting to move on from the hoi polloi and infiltrate the aristocracy.