Sometimes I feel a little sad that I didn’t grow up with PC gaming. My father-in-law had a computer I used to play a handful of classic adventure games, like Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis and Secrets of Monkey Island, and I fondly remember us doing everything we could to make Doom 3 run at a reasonable framerate without setting the living room on fire. But aside from these small moments, I didn’t build my first gaming PC until 2012. By then, Steam was a big thing and we were s𝓰l💖owly approaching the eighth console generation.
I’m a console girl, born and raised, so ဣmuch of the magic and appeal of PC gaming passed m﷽e by until adulthood, and that includes myriad classic RPGs and other such titles that have either never been ported to a console, or otherwise feel better suited to the PC platform. Games that didn’t tell you where to go or what to do, and weren’t afraid of being obtuse with their visuals and mechanics because the medium hadn’t established most of the conventions we take for granted nowadays. Quest markers, intuitive menus, and game worlds that put the player experience above all else just weren’t a thing.
Dread Delusion Is Alien, Daunting, And Kind Of Wonderful
Lovely Hellplace’s Dread Delusion is a throwback to the days I missed, an open world RPG that models itself on the likes of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Morrowind with a massive, almost supernatural setting where you are free to venture anywhere and do anything. You begin the game as a prisoner of the Inquisition, enforcer of the Apostastic Union. After doing a few favours for the High Confessor and establi𓂃shing the stakes of the main narrative, you are set loose in the open world with a few quests to tackle.
The open world - or Skyrealms, as it seems to be called - is made up of a number of floating isles all situated beneath a crimson sky, like this land has been rocked by a cataclysm that has filled the realm with all manner of monsters, diseases, and similar terrors that make living within it an absolute mare. The atmosphere is almost dreamlike, spurred onward by ethereal orchestration and archaic pixel graphics which feel at times both detailed and obscure. From the outset, I was drawn to explore it, even if I had to wrestle wi𒉰th controls and unlearn habits I had developed after decades of modern open world game design.
Your first dungeon is s🦹ome sort of towering fortress where only a handful of guards patrol the grounds, and after an NPC warned me that conflict can be avoided with a stealthy approach, I withdrew my rusted blade and began stalking across the mushroom forest near the main entrance. It wasn’t long until someone spotted me, so I mashed the shoulder button and tried to take them down, strafing around them to ensure I didn’t get hit but dealt as much damage as possible.
Combat is primitive, arguably even more so than in Morrowind, but ဣthat doesn’t make it any less engaging. Within the framework of this RPG, which pays homage to the past at every turn, it still drew me in. As did stealth, platforming, and a need to stay aware of my surroundings no matter how few pixels broug💧ht them to life.
Dread Delusion Doesn’t Tell You Where To Go Or What To Do
After esta🐎blishing the fortress as my homebase and meeting a couple of key characters, the world was my oyster, and I was immediately bowled over by how much there was to do and how effortlessly Dread Delusion is able to melt time away. I don’t even know what my avatar looks like, nor do they have a voice, but the sharply written dialogue and bleak atmosphere of this world imbue it with more than enough♕ personality. I soon developed a habit of looking around every corner and beneath each cliff or tree to discover new treasures, often random lockpicks, coins, or chests containing spells and equipment I couldn’t even use yet.
Before retiring last night, I reached one of the first major towns and spoke to the folks who called it home, one of whom gave me a quest to seek out occupants who were trying to worship the old gods. In a world whe♌re these deities are largely responsible for their own destruction, that sort of sacrilege just isn’t on. Every conversation reveals new tidbits or hints towards quests or locations I should seek out, without ever handing over a marker for me to chase. You don’t even have a map until you collect fragments from merchants, meaning you are quite literally feeling this world out for yourself with nothing else to go on.
This sense of freedom is both liberating and terrifying. You almost want to stop playing when a game like this demands your attention and ingenuity. I had to stay on top of everything that was being said to me, each thing new characters taught me, spending minutes at a time sorting through menus and f🎃iguring what buttons did what and which items I needed in my clumsily assembled loadout. It feels finicky and awkward at times, but I think it’s supposed to? It feels incredible to make the smallest of discov✅eries in Dead Delusion because they’re all mine, and step by step I’m moving through this world and unpacking its mysteries in ways nobody else will.
Steam reviews are filled with players comparing it to a golden era of PC gaming where༒ the games we played let us figure things out for ourselves. That’s a part of history I never got to experie𝐆nce for myself, so this might be the next best thing.
