reading the discourse around blue prince is the first time in my life i’ve found myself on the git gud side of things. because people are complaining that the game is too random and oblique and i don’t know what to really make of that beyond, yeah, that’s exactly the point? it’s an archaeological game, in the sense that arriving at the answers isn’t the reward, it’s the digging for them and seeing your theories validated or invalidated
it actually reminds me a lot of heaven’s vault in some ways? or disco elysium, maybe. it’s a much more *silent* game than either of those hyperverbose examples, but in all three you’re sifting through the aftermath of something about whose outline you have only the vaguest idea. heaven’s vault built its ambiguity through deep time, disco elysium through amnesia and post-bender alienation, but it’s the same basic form of mystery. less a whodunnit and more a whatevenhappenedhere. when you start blue prince, it’s not even clear that there IS a mystery to solved, and recognizing that key fact is itself one of the game’s earliest puzzles
it’s not a perfect game, by any means. it’s damn oblique and i’m still not sure exactly how much i agree with or even care about the story’s central characters. but it’s funny to see people complaining *angrily* about the central mechanic of the thing. it’s a brutally hard adventure game at a time where gaming culture mostly assumes that difficulty only comes through combat or explicit puzzles.
