Eschalon: Book I Review
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That wouldn't have sealed the deal though. Not a misplaced sense of pseudo-nostalgia. I could have turned back at that moment and eventually convinced myself that I'd been completely unmoved. It might've taken a week, but I'd later describe my experience as "nonplussed." But then the story startled me from the very beginning. Not only did it open up with an overbaked amnesia cliche (something I'd railed against only one week prior), but I was being whirlpooled into this overused you-wake-up-and-have-no-idea-who-you-are convention, already sucked in beyond the event horizon. Somehow (!), I was falling for it. And it was from nothing less than the cleanly-penned authorial tone of the text. It sure wasn't the graphics luring me in. And it sure wasn't the off-handed turn-based movement scheme. But there was something about the writing...
...Only an hour into the demo, perhaps, and already I'm wondering if my character isn't perhaps retracing something out of Memento, where his past non-amnesiac self might've left notes about himself in safeguarded areas, knowing he'd find them, hoping that he'd piece together this puzzle of self-identity. And in one of the letters my character opens, it's explained that he's a far superior warrior than he can conceive right now -- a serum he'd taken (been given?) has dumbed down his abilities, and they'll only unlock again with time and rediscovery. So now I'm thinking I could've named my character Jason Bourne. And then, in that very same letter, my character's given the option to eventually settle down with my new, non-Bourne identity, or to pursue a path of greater struggle that will lead to Eschalon's culmination. So now I'm thinking that I'm being verbally presented a "red pill, blue pill" scenario, perhaps the first since the Matrix that's made the blue pill sound the least bit compelling. And as I stroll about the town, speaking with the sensibly-realized and carefully-opinionated people, taking in their varied and choreographed stances on a distant and draining war, now I'm thinking that I might be milling about in an RPG ripped from the headlines of American newspapers.
