It's also a game about managing relationships and personalities, both your own and of those individuals around you. You can play your own character in a variety of ways, from consummate professional to snarky bastard to clueless time-travelling interloper. Your general approach will affect your relationships with the other characters on board, as will where you side in arguments and debates, and how you deal with the specifics of their own personalities, be they happy, grumpy, casual, authoritative, or any of the other three dwarves.
Navigating Consortium's sprawling narrative threads, and conversing with the primary cast of characters is where the game is at its strongest. Yet while Consortium's ideas and structure are enticing, presentation-wise the quality ranges wildly. On a personal level, the semi-cartoonish art-style doesn't appeal at all. It's all a bit bland and blocky, as if the Zenlil and its inhabitants were built out of Duplo.
Given we're supposed to be absorbed into the drama of this fictional future, the image of the plane being toyed with by an enormous toddler going "NEEEEEEEEEOWN," or whatever noise a toddler makes when they're doing an impression of a plane, is not conducive to this at all. More distracting are the animations, which are frankly dreadful, and have a tendency to play out in completely irrelevant situations. It's very difficult to take a person seriously when they appear to be tickling an invisible horse under the chin.
The sound design is equally hit and miss. The musical score is excellent, as you would expect given it's composed by Jeremy "Elder Scrolls" Soule. On the other hand, the quality of the sound effects is really quite horrible and sometimes even painful to listen to. There are moments when the "connection" between your computer and this fictional world encounter problems, and the sound effect for this faux interference is like someone stuffing glass into your ears.
Even the game's most important features, namely the script and the voice acting, are hobbled by some pretty serious problems. They start off well enough. Several of the characters are voiced superbly, especially your Irish pseudo-sidekick Rook 25 and the friendly Australian pilot Rook 9 (oh yes, the characters have codenames formed by combining the name of a chess piece with a number, which is bloody confusing and would never pass as a hierarchical structure for any military organisation). But the quality dips dramatically as the game goes on. The aircraft's doctor, Rook 13, seems to have surgically removed his own personality as a medical experiment, while the Mercenary leader Kiril Angelov must have been employed in his post directly from the local Christmas Pantomime.
The quality plummets to its lowest point upon the introduction of Rook 3, who appears toward the game's conclusion for no apparent reason other than to obliterate any gravitas Consortium has managed to generate by this point. His arrival coincides with a major plot twist which to be honest is difficult to take seriously as it is, but Rook 3's appalling "banter" with Rook 9, presumably meant to convey Rook 3's swaggering, roguish attitude toward danger, makes this entire scene utterly laughable. It's equivalent to the Council of Elrond being conducted with Gandalf dressed as a giant sandwich.
There are other, smaller issues too, namely the fiddly inventory and the stilted shooting sequences. But both only occasionally require your attention, and so don't impact on the experience too much. Rather, it's the smear of amateurishness that coats almost every aspect of the game that does the real damage. In a game which is so much about story and character interaction, how these things are presented is vital to draw the player in and engage them in the fiction, and sadly Consortium stumbles in all the crucial areas.
All that said, Consortium does demonstrate a lot of clever ideas, and the story is just about strong enough to carry it through the game's many hiccups. Somewhat like last year's Gone Home, its framework is one that more story/adventure games should aspire to, even if it doesn't make the best use of that framework itself. Not a classic, then, but definitely something that can be built on.
Navigating Consortium's sprawling narrative threads, and conversing with the primary cast of characters is where the game is at its strongest. Yet while Consortium's ideas and structure are enticing, presentation-wise the quality ranges wildly. On a personal level, the semi-cartoonish art-style doesn't appeal at all. It's all a bit bland and blocky, as if the Zenlil and its inhabitants were built out of Duplo.
Given we're supposed to be absorbed into the drama of this fictional future, the image of the plane being toyed with by an enormous toddler going "NEEEEEEEEEOWN," or whatever noise a toddler makes when they're doing an impression of a plane, is not conducive to this at all. More distracting are the animations, which are frankly dreadful, and have a tendency to play out in completely irrelevant situations. It's very difficult to take a person seriously when they appear to be tickling an invisible horse under the chin.
The sound design is equally hit and miss. The musical score is excellent, as you would expect given it's composed by Jeremy "Elder Scrolls" Soule. On the other hand, the quality of the sound effects is really quite horrible and sometimes even painful to listen to. There are moments when the "connection" between your computer and this fictional world encounter problems, and the sound effect for this faux interference is like someone stuffing glass into your ears.
Even the game's most important features, namely the script and the voice acting, are hobbled by some pretty serious problems. They start off well enough. Several of the characters are voiced superbly, especially your Irish pseudo-sidekick Rook 25 and the friendly Australian pilot Rook 9 (oh yes, the characters have codenames formed by combining the name of a chess piece with a number, which is bloody confusing and would never pass as a hierarchical structure for any military organisation). But the quality dips dramatically as the game goes on. The aircraft's doctor, Rook 13, seems to have surgically removed his own personality as a medical experiment, while the Mercenary leader Kiril Angelov must have been employed in his post directly from the local Christmas Pantomime.
The quality plummets to its lowest point upon the introduction of Rook 3, who appears toward the game's conclusion for no apparent reason other than to obliterate any gravitas Consortium has managed to generate by this point. His arrival coincides with a major plot twist which to be honest is difficult to take seriously as it is, but Rook 3's appalling "banter" with Rook 9, presumably meant to convey Rook 3's swaggering, roguish attitude toward danger, makes this entire scene utterly laughable. It's equivalent to the Council of Elrond being conducted with Gandalf dressed as a giant sandwich.
There are other, smaller issues too, namely the fiddly inventory and the stilted shooting sequences. But both only occasionally require your attention, and so don't impact on the experience too much. Rather, it's the smear of amateurishness that coats almost every aspect of the game that does the real damage. In a game which is so much about story and character interaction, how these things are presented is vital to draw the player in and engage them in the fiction, and sadly Consortium stumbles in all the crucial areas.
All that said, Consortium does demonstrate a lot of clever ideas, and the story is just about strong enough to carry it through the game's many hiccups. Somewhat like last year's Gone Home, its framework is one that more story/adventure games should aspire to, even if it doesn't make the best use of that framework itself. Not a classic, then, but definitely something that can be built on.
RELATED ARTICLES
-
Overall60 / 100
MSI MPG Velox 100R Chassis Review
October 14 2021 | 15:04
Want to comment? Please log in.