clickbliss

Herald Review

by Kieffer (@kiefferwilson)

• Herald: An Interactive Period Drama
  
• Developer- Wispfire
  
• Publisher- Wispfire
  
• PC (Steam, GOG, Humble, itch.io )
  

What responsibility do video games have to report on the historical past? As a medium allowing for interactivity between the player and the virtual space, video games allow players the ability to interact with historical spaces, and become embodied within historical characters. Within the last couple of years this has been a responsibility that games have answered to. Last year (2016),  1979 Revolution: Black Friday gave players choice during the Iranian Revolution, and a couple of years earlier, Valiant Hearts: The Great War had players bounding through the relationships of World War I. Herald, the debut episodic game developed by Wispfire, is a new game focusing on the tensions between Europe and India during the 19th century. As of now only two of four episodes are released, which is what I will be reviewing.

Herald is a period drama. The events are set in an alternate version of the 19th century where England has formed together with majority of the powerful governments of the world to form The Protectorate. This international group helps its unified countries with political decisions, trade, and other issues while finding ways to make all of the excluded countries benefit it as well. While this is different from our world history, it is not too far from the facts.

The 19th century marked the decline of Britain’s colonial influence and power over India. For centuries England fostered the East India Trading Company and attempted to monopolize the import of spices and other goods from the area. By the mid 1850’s this was put to an end and the monopoly on spices was broken. Soon after came a series of revolts, including the Indian Mutiny in 1873,  bolstered the Indian people which forced England out, leaving India to raise up new government bodies. These years were a crucial time of choice for the Indian nation and its citizens.

Herald, similar in some ways to 1979 Revolution, is a point-and-click adventure game that pronounces the fact that the player will make large narrative choices throughout. Told from a storytelling perspective through flashbacks, where the protagonist recounts his journey on the boat The Herald, an indigo dye import ship. I ended up meeting characters from many different parts of the world during my voyage. Each of them were experiencing different problems pertaining to their relationship with another. One of the main officers of the boat feels othered by his commanding officer, the servant boy of the ship feels dehumanized by everyone on the ship, including his advisor, and the main character is searching for his familial roots. Everyone feels alien on a ship colored by colonialism.

All of these characters’s problems end up falling on the protagonist’s shoulders, Devan Rensburg, and lead to a choice. Many times these choices are insubstantial in comparison to the conflicts happening in the political environment which the game points to, however at times the player will have to make choices that can weigh as much as saving a life. For example, during one situation I had to choose to let the officer who felt othered keep a firearm or not after he was caught stealing it. I ended up letting him and it helped form a relationship between the protagonist and him, but it lead to unfortunate consequences.

What troubles me the most about the choices in Herald is that I rarely felt much of a difference between deciding what ingredients to put inside of a stew and making decisions that could lead to a character’s death. Throughout the game there are two levels of decisions that are clearly identified by a change of artwork during a situation. One level is a basic decision that will lead to different dialogue occurring during the player’s game, but won’t change any events. The other level is extreme decisions that change the events of the narrative drastically such as if a character will live.

I don’t like to believe that I am a heartless person, but most of the time I viewed all of the choices as something that boiled down to a change that would make characters interact with me differently. “Does it really matter how long I eavesdrop on this conversation? Should I follow the direct orders of the captain? Would it be more interesting if I let this character die?” This was how I handled all but one choice, where I felt emotionally attached to a situation’s outcome. I never felt as if the game affected me differently when I was making a basic dialogue option versus these larger, narrative splitting decisions. 

These questions were always answered by what I felt would bring the most interesting result. It was disappointing for me that I didn’t feel attached to my decisions and the world that it would be effecting, instead I was detached and looking for ways to manipulate the text. The two books never gave me enough time with each character to make me feel emotionally compelled, instead it gives drastic situations that question the player’s morals. I assume that this is because there is only a limited amount of time that the characters interact with each other due to the game’s short length of around 3-5 hours.

The design of Herald follows similar logic to the ways which the game’s choices are. A character will tell Devan where to go after they are done speaking with him and then the player must navigate their way to the next character. If they speak with anyone who is not part of the objective then the only text they will receive is flavor text that is either repeated from earlier or meaningless. The player is also able to click on objects within the environment that sometimes give the player information about how they were placed in 19th century culture, another way which the game made me question the choice of an alternate world. All of these limitations on player choice and exploration make it clear that this is much less of a point and click adventure, and more of a visual novel with a visualization of its spaces.

This puts Herald in a different position of many visual novels and adventure games. Many visual novels focus on the dialogue between characters and rarely allow the player to explore the space which they are experiencing the narrative in. Looking at it from this perspective, it is a cool twist on the genre. However, this exploratory space is still very limiting to the player’s imagination and their curiosity. The most information that the game provides in this space is about the historical aspects of the ship, and less about the current space which the player is exploring. While reading about ship’s wheels in the 19th century is enjoyable, it loses potential combined effect from seeing it used as a part of the player’s world. In this sense, the lore of the world feels detached from the space that the player is a part of.

I may come off critical of Herald in all of this, but the way that the second book of Herald ends has me ready to see what happens next. While majority of the game takes place on the seas, there are small scenes at the beginning, a couple times throughout, and at the end that hint at where Devan’s path will lead next. At the end of book II the story hints at something bigger than just the ship and ends by introducing a character that is completely unfamiliar but given emphasis in a way which makes me believe the audience is supposed to know her. It isn’t even a great way to end the second book, but with the hints at who Devan is related to and the new character introduced I am invested.

Herald is a journey into the world of increasing globalization and the items, people, and relationships which that transformation brings. There are some interactions with characters that are fun, but many interactions will make the player think about how the characters will be effected within the cultural and political ecology. It does end on a somewhat flimsy cliffhanger, and the characters’ relationships are effectively deficient. However, this one seems like it will connect more with those that have historical interests.