Woo, man. I literally just finished playing RiME a few minutes ago. I had to jump on and start the write-up while it was still fresh in my mind. Despite the fact that the lingering suspicion I had as the game went on turned out to be true, the revelation at the end is so much worse than that.
Video games as an art form have always had one big problem; they don’t trust the player to understand what’s happening without explaining to them, in detail, to the point of insult. It’s also one of the main reasons why they’ve never really been taken seriously by those outside of the industry. Heavy-handed exposition and eye-rolling levels of unnecessary dialogue usually take us out of any experience we try to have.
Luckily these days we have studios like Ninja Theory pushing the envelope with Hellblade Senua’s Sacrifice, and before that, we had Tequila Works with RiME. The problem was, I had no idea what RiME was about, nor did I have any idea what kind of emotional impact it was going to have on me.
RiME is a puzzle game, and like other environmental puzzle games it has a story that it will slowly unfold over the course of the game. But unlike the other puzzle games, RiME will tell the entire story with never a word being spoken.
This alone was a welcome and surprising change, as games like The Turing Test, Pneuma, and The Talos Priniciple practically beat you over the head with heavy-handed philosophies and questions of humanity or morality. By the time I was done with those games I was so over whatever the fuck they were yapping on about I was glad to see it end.
RiME delivers its story in the environment itself, subtly, and without ever demanding anything from its player, other than proceeding through the environment and getting the young boy from one platform to the next. If you don’t pick up on what may be happening during the game itself, all is revealed at the end.
And man, what an end. I had my suspicions, and they were confirmed, but it went beyond that and added the gut-wrenching plot twist that just made it that much worse (in this case, I guess worse is a good thing?) I’m trying to be intentionally vague here as not to spoil anything. I’m not sure if the story was as poignant as it was because of the art direction and music, or if it just took me by surprise because I honestly hadn’t expected anything more than a simple puzzle game. The developer and publisher smartly downplayed this, and the game was that much better for it.
The game itself is not without its issues though. It runs alright on the Xbox One X, but I started it out on the base Xbox One, and it was pretty rough. I also know that the recent Switch port had its issues as well. My advice is, check this out if you have a PS4 Pro or an X, but be prepared for long load times and a lot of frame rate drops if you’re playing on anything less than those.
For those of you who have played the game already, or if you’re reading this and you just have to know what happened, Eurogamer just recently published a write-up where the creator and writer for RiME explains the meaning of the game. It’s definitely worth the read, and trust me, even if you think you have it figured out, you’ll be surprised at just how much you missed.
Rarely do I praise a game. At times, RiME did drag a bit, and I did get a bit of puzzle fatigue here and there. It happens with me. But just as a terrible ending can undo all of the great story before it, a great ending can make you forget all the toil it took you to get there.
