Bleak Faith: Forsaken Review
Faith No More
Let me start out by saying that I am not a video game apologist. I can say with certainty that my time with Bleak Faith: Forsaken was not a fun one. From the first moment of gameplay — heck, from the opening cinematic — I was stunned into speechlessness by its utter lack of context, by the rude bedside manner in which it catapults the player into its segmented world and expects fun to somehow manifest itself, and by the lack of grace inherent in its combat and exploration. In short, it’s not an experience I’m eager to relive once this review is published, and I’d be hard-pressed to recommend it to someone else. However, the unusual circumstances of its development are not lost on me. The fact that a three-man team even attempted, much less completed, a project of this scale and magnitude is nothing short of impressive, regardless of its ultimate quality. The fact that several stretches of gameplay still managed to at least be tolerable and feel like a game also speaks volumes to the levels the developers could rise to in the future, given enough time and money, and perhaps some scaled-back aspirations.
It is probably next to impossible to accurately portray the level of exasperated confusion the game’s opening moments cause. After a completely nonsensical cinematic lacking any context and devoid of what could pass for narrative elements, the player character, simply called the Forsaken, is dumped in the middle of what might potentially be the interior of a behemoth spaceship or a blasted post-apocalyptic cityscape, maybe even a dreary sci-fi dreamworld, with an unending void all around and no choice but to simply advance toward the only structure in sight. At this early stage, it is likely new players are still willing to roll with the confusing punches in hopes of an eventual payoff or reveal, though, of course, none is ever coming. On and on the Forsaken runs through this world, called the Omnistructure, eventually approaching what may be an unfathomably large tenement block, with crumbling balconies and lifeless living quarters stacked as far as the eye can see. It’s at this point that the head-scratching begins in earnest: Where is the Forsaken? What happened here? What is his purpose? Unfortunately, there are few answers and even fewer moments of satisfaction to be gleaned in the next twenty-something hours.
Bleak enough for ya?
Not every environment in Bleak Faith is as quixotic as these first moments, and not every moment feels like a disorienting plunge into an impossible world that defies reason and logic, though these opening minutes are also far from exclusive in this regard. As players progress from area to area, it becomes impossible to deny the developers’ creativity when designing the game world, even if nothing seems to tie together thematically. It doesn’t take long for the experience to become too perplexing for its own good. Action RPGs often live and die by how enjoyable their carefully crafted environments are to explore, and Bleak Faith stumbles on this particular hurdle far too frequently.
For one, it is rare that environments double back on themselves (or each other) with clever shortcuts that open back to previous areas and checkpoints to mark progression. Though it does happen from time to time, it is far more likely that a path will simply lead on to a new area, or else terminate in a dead end and need to be traced back. Entering a new area also adds no sense of interconnectedness to the world, as standing on a particular elevator or entering into a tunnel to travel to the next area often simply calls up a load screen, with no sense how the world is stitched together from its disparate zones. To be fair, this isn’t the most pressing complaint about the game, but in a world where this level of environmental world design is so commonly expected, this omission is glaring.
In general, the world design doesn’t lend itself well to storytelling, as there are no satisfying conclusions to be gleaned anywhere. Oh, there are some occasional interesting zone aesthetics — exploring soaring spires high up in the sky connected via impossibly long bridges while deadly drops into sheer nothingness await all around, or diving into a sunken metropolis submerged beneath water (in a bold move, the game throws in swimming mechanics for good measure) — but there’s never even an inkling of an attempt to tie it all together, to provide even the remotest narrative payoff. Instead, the pastiche of environments, with individual points of interest thrown together into an ill-fitting whole, becomes an aspect of the game the player just sort of becomes numb to, and fails to add anything particularly memorable to the experience.
Some places in the Omnistructure heavily resemble our everyday world.
Progressing through Bleak Faith is a bit of an exercise in rolling the dice, with only the vaguest attempt at an objective provided to the player in a conversation early on that suggests the Forsaken seek out special computer terminals, though what these are or how to do this are never explained. In fact, there is no way to know where to even find said terminals apart from exploring everywhere and defeating any boss one encounters until one stumbles upon a terminal by pure happenstance. So players simply wander through the game, fast-traveling from area to area in the hope of stumbling upon a boss needed for progression. It’s quite telling that this review playthrough ended after just over twenty hours solely due to a decided portion of luck that led to discovering a crucial boss fight that was completely missed earlier on, hiding one of the last terminals needed to finish.
Said bosses tend to be a mixed bag in Bleak Faith, with some fights being genuinely entertaining to learn and execute while others may include awkward mechanics or suffer from being either incredibly difficult or made trivial due to inadvertent over-leveling. The more traditional showdowns against large humanoid bosses like Konrad the Traitor and Nurgei the Blademaster, who wield swords and rely on movesets and attack patterns that evolve slightly as the battles rage on were at least sufficiently entertaining. A novel inclusion seen in other select boss encounters is the ability for the Forsaken to scale some of his larger foes, an idea inspired perhaps by the likes of Dragon’s Dogma and Shadow of the Colossus. Once mounted piggy-back or hitching a ride through the sky or water (in the case of particular swimming or flying bosses), players can use a special dagger to repeatedly strike an enemy’s vitals, usually staggering them or opening them up to further damage, while hanging on for dear life as their rides frantically attempt to shake off the unwanted passenger. This callback to other games definitely sounds neat on paper, but the mechanic isn’t implemented with enough fidelity to make it a true staple here, and in any case often feels somewhat oddly placed in a game that otherwise puts the spotlight on frantic action and dodging.
Some larger enemies and bosses are climbable.
Elsewhere, the game’s combat in general suffers from the same win-some, lose-some syndrome as the bosses. Standard trash mobs often feel fine to square off against, even if their designs, like the environments, don’t do much to stand apart from the pack. Oddly, the game has trouble making its larger non-boss foes much of a threat, as they tend to have a hard time zeroing in on the Forsaken with their attacks while he can easily dodge around and underneath them to stay in their blind spot and chip away at their health. The real problem is that combat just doesn’t often feel very fluid or enjoyable, and on a few occasions, corpse runs through a lengthy stretch of enemy chokepoints and bottlenecks are so tiresome that it just becomes less of a hassle to run right through the hordes of enemies, even if they tend to continue giving chase for long distances before eventually losing interest in the player.
The game does feature quite a lot of weapon and armor variety, which can further be upgraded and customized as it progresses. Reaching certain milestones — such as defeating certain bosses — will upgrade the Handler, a NPC found at bonfire checkpoints who allows the player to upgrade their equipment to match her own current level, with each new tier opening up an additional gear slot to socket special gems into. These range in effect from adding extra damage resistance to a piece of armor to imbuing a weapon with the Health Leech perk so that it heals the player every time it damages a foe. Equipping different armor sets or weapon types does have an impact on the player’s speed and mobility, and it’s not uncommon to find oneself struggling against a boss and completely changing gear loadout in order to trade off a slower weapon that hits with more power for something faster yet less powerful. There are also some weapon and armor affinities that make them more or less suited against particular boss encounters. Weirdly, though, weight encumbrance seems to top out at 100%, with no additional penalties assigned for heaping on more gear past that threshold.
The monochromatic color palette is a feature, not a bug.
Apart from major downfalls like combat and world design, Bleak Faith occasionally evidences a number of smaller annoyances, either due to coding issues, lack of experience, or the scope of the game simply having gotten away from the developers. For instance, it was fairly common during the review playthrough for hit detection to lag substantially behind the on-screen action, leading to enemies that would otherwise be one-shotted instead tanking hits unscathed, then slingshotting madly around the screen once the game engine caught up and suddenly dialed their health to zero. Dialogue subtitles would also at times fluctuate in font size, even mid-sentence, adding some extra wonk to the already surreal experience that passes for an attempt at narrative. Yet another example, though one that is odd by design, sees important upgrade materials gained by defeating a boss returned to said boss arena upon the player’s death; though the boss itself would remain bested, regaining the materials would necessitate an additional run to the boss arena just to pick up the items in question again. While each of these issues isn’t a deal-breaker on its own, they are nonetheless worthy of pointing out as they do impact the overall experience to some small degree.
A potentially larger issue is the game’s presentation. The visuals are likely the lesser issue here and may even appeal to some. If the developers’ mission was to solidify the titular feeling of bleakness within the player, then they were certainly successful. Environments are often both devoid of color and life — apart from enemies — despite some being very obviously places where a civilization once lived and thrived. The aforementioned dwelling towers and sunken city share real estate space with an abandoned subway system, a shattered concrete highway, and a run-down asylum. But it’s all so otherworldly and alien that it weighs upon the player in an almost physical sense, which is impressive, even if not exactly pleasant. Sound design, however, is less praiseworthy, with music used sparingly or even entirely absent in places. Though that could potentially be said to heighten the atmosphere, glaring issues like some boss encounters missing entire sound cues noticeably detract from the experience again.
All in all, it’s hard to imagine many players will get a lot out of Bleak Faith: Forsaken. It successfully pushes to the forefront an alien and otherworldly experience which is indeed as bleak as its name implies, but this alone does not an enjoyable time make. With large-scale issues embedded within its narrative structure, progression, exploration, and combat, the cons easily outweigh the pros. There are reasons to praise the design team’s overall effort — particularly given the game’s scope and the extreme limitations they had to cope with — but beyond an academic appreciation, Bleak Faith simply isn’t a fun game to play. With no shortage of far superior similar titles available on the market, this one may be relegated to go down as a hopeful starting point for its creators, but not one that will stand tall on its own merits.
Disclosure: This review is based on a free copy of the game provided by the publisher.
An incredibly ambitious project developed by a small indie team
Environments crank the bleakness dial to 11
Who? What? Where? When? Why? How?
The world is large, but not fun to explore
Combat is adequate at best, but frequently dips below that
Wonky performance issues and entirely absent sound cues
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