Sea of Solitude is one of those games that’s more of an experience than a game. Some people call them “walking simulators” though in this case it’s not quite accurate, since there is a bit of platforming and at least some sense of danger. Your character can actually die, but you’ll quickly re-spawn almost exactly where you died, so it’s not much of an incentive to be careful. Once I realized the consequences were practically non-existent, I got a lot sloppier with my gameplay. Or maybe it’s because I played through the entire 3+ hour experience in one sitting. But I digress…
Like most walking simulators, there’s a story that plays out while you’re doing stuff, and usually there’s some central theme or mystery playing out as you progress. In the case of Sea of Solitude, you play as Kay, a woman in her early twenties (from what I gathered) that became a monster and is navigating a sunken city while avoiding and dealing with other monsters. Yes, they’re metaphors, albeit pretty on-the-nose ones. Subtlety is not the name of the game here. The game doesn’t leave too much room for interpretation, as it pretty much tells you under no uncertain terms who the monsters are and what was happening to them.
Ironically, the only part where the game was frustratingly vague was at the end. I’ll try to avoid spoilers here as not to make playing the game completely pointless. Let’s just say the entire journey answers questions almost immediately. Nothing is ever left to ponder for very long. As I said, it’s all pretty straight-forward. But at the end, after the game narration explaining practically everything, you’re left with one gigantic question that is the reason for the entire story to exist: What happened to Kay?
What was the catalyst for Kay’s psychological break? The scenarios that play out over the course of the game are pieces of her life and show how she and the others around her dealt with, well.. basically life sucking. But there had to be a moment, a “final straw” if you will, to trigger this journey of self-discovery, and the end of the game provides absolutely no context to it whatsoever. It’s really quite frustrating. What’s even more frustrating is that I’m trying not to spoil it while bitching about it.
At the end of the game, you get a sense that Kay has found inner peace. But then what? Where is she? Where is everybody else? Is she dead? Is she stranded on a deserted island? One of the things I hate the most about these “interactive stories” is that most of the ones I have played through have absolutely no earthly idea what an ending looks like, because most of them suck. (Except for What Remains of Edith Finch, if you haven’t played that one, DO IT).
I wish this game was about an hour shorter. I felt by the two-hour mark, the game could have ended and I would’ve been fine. The problem with these kinds of games is that you really don’t want to stop playing and come back to it later. It would be like watching a (presumably) emotionally intense movie, only to turn it off halfway through and be like “ah I’ll come back to it in a few days.) By then all the emotional build-up is gone. You’re no longer invested. I feel like that when it comes to these kinds of games as well, and there should be a conscious decision by the developers to keep it between two to three hours, or compartmentalize your chapters to where the player feels that they’ve gotten a complete story and can safely quit out and not lose any emotional momentum picking it back up later. Sea of Solitude rolls on slowly like a steady freight train, and the chapters roll into each other so seamlessly they are barely more than a line of text on the screen.
Never did I feel like there was a good stopping point, and it was a feeling that carried on all the way to the end.
I can commend what the developers were going for, but I didn’t like the ending. You have the reward the gamer with answers, and while that may not mean explicitly describing everything in detail, just a little bit of a hint would help. If you do that, then maybe gamers like me will be like “yeah it was awesome!” instead of writing multiple paragraphs explaining why it wasn’t awesome.
Know what I mean?
Update: Oh, yeah, graphics. Game looks good! Monsters are very “Where the Wild Things Are” ish. If you’ve read that book, you know what I mean. If you haven’t, you should read it, before it gets banned for being offensive to monsters or something.
