Unlike other games featured at this year’s Xbox and Bethesda Showcase,As Dusk Fallsmade waves by breaking from the norms of game design. From Interior/Night, a team led byformer Quantic Dream lead designer Caroline Marchal,As Dusk Fallsseems to be embracing an experimental idea and dressing it up in style.
Following the ever-growing trend of visual novels surging onto the gaming scene,As Dusk Fallsfollows the stories of several characters who all find their lives irreversibly intertwined with one another. While the game itself has many significant stand-out features to it, one of its biggest and most obvious design choices is its art style, and it’s getting a very mixed reception from players with many questioning its part at theXboxShowcase.
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As Dusk Falls' Unique Qualities
The premise of the game itself is more straightforward than similar visual novels or interactive narratives on the market, sinceAs Dusk Fallsventures for gritty realism instead of fantastical elements. Set in Arizona in the 1990s, two families collide through circumstances of a hostage situation, paving the way for a great depth of moral challenges to fuel the narrative. Games like these that offer a breadth of difficult moral choices aren’t entirely new, but one ofAs Dusk Falls’most ambitious features is the 8-player co-op functionality, allowing several friends to come along for the ride and share the journey together. Given the previous ties to Quantic Dream, creator of notable adventure games such asDetroit: Become Human, it’s unsurprising that Interior/Night would seek to somehow push the envelope of the medium beyond its competition.
However, as promising as this may seem, these aspects are being overlooked by audiences due toAs Dusk Falls' unusual design choice. The game doesn’t feature much in the way of character animation, instead using still images to give the illusion of movement. Strangely, other elements of the game don’t seem to follow this, as the trailer depicted a car traveling normally, suggesting the animation style is limited to its characters. It’s a radical change, given that other visual novels don’t scale back their design this much, but there may be a good reason for Interior/Night making this decision.
The Reason Behind As Dusk Falls' Design
While it would be nice to assume that Interior/Night has made the design choice for a purely aesthetic reason, it might actually tie back to itsAs Dusk Falls' ambitious 8-player co-op scope. If the game lives up to the promise of an ethically difficult journey for all players involved, then it stands to reason that every decision made by players leads to an entirely unique course of events and outcome. With an ambitious workload, perhaps scaling back on the animation design helps alleviate the strain that would have left its staff. Additionally, by embracing the design choice instead of attempting to hide it, the studio can focus itself on delivering its other goals such as the deep narrative at its core.
Sadly, if the narrative itself doesn’t pay off, this will ultimately undermine the design choice to limit its characters. Physical movement is a huge means of conveying emotion and personality, even if characters aren’t talking, so Interior/Night is taking a big risk here. Players have already expressed some concerns with the design via social media and on the trailer itself, and if the game already has people worried it won’t live up to player expectations, then Interior/Night’s debut game may already be at a disadvantage. That being said, ifprevious Quantic Dream gamesset the standard for Interior/Night, then there is some hope thatAs Dusk Fallscould still succeed, provided it follows through and hits every beat it’s setting up for itself.
As Dusk Fallsis set to release on July 19 for PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
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