IThe story begins on the highway, miles from a state border in an alternate United States. The stakes are clear, if nothing else is: Pax, the player character, is a black woman in her 30s who has just completed a heist with her friends. The border means freedom. The police car telling you to stop means trouble.
Pax and company are Anomals, people who possess manipulative vocal abilities called vox. Pax can bend people to his will by making them feel bad, using abilities called “trigger” or “cancel.” His former partner, Noam, can calm people down with an ability known as “gaslighting.” Dustborn is certainly not subtle in what he’s trying to say. You soon find yourself with people who are infected with weaponized disinformation.
Vox can be used in certain situations, such as dialogue options, often when a problem is urgent. By pressing a dialogue option, Pax will be able to see what you think about what might happen before you commit to it. Does Pax think it’s better to prevent someone from asking by using a block, or would it be better to start a fight by using a trigger?
This is an extremely useful feature, especially if it’s unclear what a single-word dialogue option is supposed to represent. In my case, this first run-in with the police ends with an agitated cop stepping out onto the highway, where a truck does the rest. This is just one of many tense encounters that stand between the group and successfully delivering a stolen data drive in Nova Scotia, Canada.
It’s surprising how many of the decisions you make Dustborn remembers. Whenever a character references a previous event influenced by your decisions, a little comic book icon appears on the screen. This often happens multiple times in a conversation, and makes Dustborn feel like a narrative experience you’re actively shaping.
Dustborn also features hack-and-slash combat, but it’s very easy and gets pretty monotonous. If you don’t like it, you can reduce the frequency of encounters. Since the group travels incognito like a touring punk-rock band, there’s also a small rhythm game section, a fun little distraction, but the songs are pretty bad. Perhaps this is because the band is an incognito story, but it’s still hard to stomach tracks that rhyme the word “born” with “born.” Three times.
The game is sure to irritate some, by stating loudly and clearly its characters’ political views: namely, that Nazis are bad. It also doesn’t say anything else worth mentioning. The setting, for example, doesn’t hold up to even cursory analysis: a paranoid JFK, after surviving his assassination attempt, is said to have “basically resurrected Nazi Germany.” To be clear, Dustborn’s setting doesn’t at all reflect the horrors of Nazi Germany. The problem is that you might think it does. There are references to book burnings, people talking about “the struggle,” but it never culminates in anything substantial. Many ideas compete for real space (robots, a near-apocalyptic event, the dangers of totalitarianism) and none get the space it deserves.
Meanwhile, real-world problems become something of supernatural origin: later in the game, you acquire a method of curing people infected with disinformation. You point a device at a person, who then wakes up and exclaims, “Wait, the progressive mind virus doesn’t exist! What was I saying?” Turning the actual fight against disinformation into a supernatural element does it a real disservice. Most shockingly, issues like racism don’t seem to play a role: everyone on your team comes from a minority background, and no character feels the need to comment on it, which is nice, but, from my experience as a minority, it’s just as shocking as if you didn’t have diverse characters at all. The game didn’t need all this setting, it didn’t even need supernatural powers, and a lot of it ends up cheapening a well-intentioned message.
The character writing, on the other hand, is excellent throughout. Dustborn is a game where characters talk about their feelings, with candor and depth, which is engrossing, and is complemented by regular get-togethers with your friends around the campfire after each mission.
The underlying problem with Dustborn is the balance between serious themes and the supernatural, as well as its clear desire to alternate between funny moments, activism, and drama — a balance it ultimately can’t quite strike. For example, a tragedy for an entire community is followed by a birthday party for a raccoon. I had a better time once I stopped taking it seriously, because the standout moments occur when Dustborn leans into the silliness of its supernatural story. With Dustborn, you can expect a tense journey across the U.S., but what you really end up getting is the equivalent of an interactive Marvel movie — and that’s OK.
