You can thank (or blame) Telltale Games for making choice-driven adventure games mainstream. That’s not to say that games like The Walking Dead have brought about some unseen revolution in video game storytelling. Story-driven games defined by user choices go back decades, a mechanic that’s been present in many Western role-playing games, and the history of visual novels hasn’t been discussed yet. But it did open the idea to a wider gaming population, leading to a mainstream shift from storytelling to player agency that continues to this day.
Players can now control their own destiny, but with unavoidable limitations. Understanding your role in these games as the puppeteer rather than the storyteller, above and beyond all of these experiences, forces you to accept the reality that a game’s ending will never truly be defined beyond the boundaries of what the developers intended. Harmony: The Fall of Reverie asks a simple question: why not face this reality head on, and instead choose to unveil player choice within the confines of the story to stunning, effortless effect.
When Polly returns to her hometown of Atina after news of her mother’s disappearance shocked her family, she discovers a necklace that reveals her destiny as an oracle, who has the power to act in her Leaping between home and the dreamlike plains of heaven, with the spirit of human emotions: bliss, power, bond, truth, chaos and glory. In this land, she is harmony, holding the power to save and shape these intertwined dimensions. Celestial instability threatens their reality, which faces similar oppression from the unknown megacorp Monoconzen (MK), whose influence extends to every public and private service in the region. Who knows, maybe confronting this company head-on might hold the answers to your mother’s bizarre disappearance and Reverie’s turmoil.
Even more than a decade since the then fledgling French studio pioneered another influential, choice-driven adventure game in Life is Strange, the team continues to unleash its craft in the field. Just about every Don’t Nod game since Life is Strange has, consciously or not, thought about what it means to lead a story for a character you don’t know – a situation of player agency where you’re inevitably influenced by the experience and perspective of the game and never can consider.
Take Tyler’s experience as a transgender person on Don’t Nod’s 2020 release Tell Me Why. Because of their own experiences, these may inevitably lead to trans players or allies seeking help or protecting themselves and their characters from certain events, even if they were real people, these behaviors may appear to be consistent with Taylor’s story and The inner world runs counter to it. Of course I feel guilty about my game. To counter this possibility, Tyler’s telepathic abilities give him a greater understanding of the world around him, bridging the knowledge gap between character and player.
Despite attempts at bridging, there’s still a gap between players and being fully immersed in Taylor’s world. You can never really embody the protagonist’s life, and the path to a select few predetermined endings remains limited. Don’t Nod’s solution is to allow you to subtly peek behind the scenes, build harmony around a character who can foresee the future (or rather: all of it): The Fall of Fantasy, and create an epic story about controlling fate and crafting it for you. people to create the world you desire. All of this without overemphasizing optimization can come across as a cold or indifferent choice.
With that in mind, Harmony feels like it pulls back the veil on the limitations of the genre as a whole — and the mechanics of game design in the narrative itself — showing us the ending from the beginning and challenging us to forge our own path toward goals.
As Oracle, Polly must balance Atina’s worlds and the raging power struggle between the emotions of Reverie, each clashing over how these worlds should survive and thrive. Influenced by her own mind and the nature of these emotions, she gains access to the Augural, a vision of the future represented in the form of a choice flow chart listing the effects of her actions on the power of the entity in the fantasy , and she and those she surrounds herself with.
With divination, there are limits to your omniscience – you’ll see the immediate consequences for the rest of the chapter, but as you use this information to change your fate, the consequences of those decisions may only come later in the story visible. Still, Augural shows Polly reality and all its permutations, balancing the knowledge gap between player and character. You may live among the crowd, but your vision enables you to bend the world to its will as you choose.
When your own experience collides with your visionary and worldly experiences, it creates conflict, and it’s a fascinating conflict. When worlds are interconnected and decisions between destinies are intertwined, even small decisions can become complex puzzles in understanding the impact an entity in Reverie may gain compared to your desired worldview. Even blind and minor decisions can become conflicts of morality and logic. You can choose to pressure a potential ally into what they know about your mother’s disappearance, but are you willing to do so knowing that it could lead to frustration for another friend and throw power in a fantasy arms race Hand over to the entity you’re looking for unwilling to support?
Never mind that all the foresight that exists is of little consequence to the wisdom of hindsight. Since these potential consequences are often further than you can see, a friend’s words remain a painful reminder of the consequences of your future path.
For example, Yana is an old classmate of Polly, who has an ambiguous romantic interest that has lain dormant for ten years. Hope they understand why you are doing this, I followed Ball’s advice to use these feelings to gain information about your mother’s disappearance. Our past connection, and Polly’s role as a potential savior in this situation, means that, if not the right thing to do, at least it is necessary. Anything close to the truth, right? Surely they will understand. You have been in love.
Seeing the future and realizing it are two different things. Yana’s disappointment stabbed like a dagger, and no amount of praise for Polly’s power behavior could clear that pit in my stomach. It’s manipulative, cold, and brutal, but that momentary lapse in judgment only happens when foresight seems to portend a perfect solution. Recognizing a necessary evil they could understand and move on, guiltless, eased my doubts.
But for the rest of the game, regrets kept haunting me. While all of these betrayals might go unnoticed, or at least not lingering in the mind, in other games, in Harmony: Fallen Fantasy, this betrayal of trust is reinforced by thoughtful flow charts that convince me one. Based on their mutual trust and admiration, an impenetrable wall was erected between me and the options that would make Polly and Yana’s bond stronger. Instead, my experience strides forward and is now haunted by a future I can see but never follow. All because of the belief that witnessing the future gave me some blueprints for relationships.
Regret, joy, contemplation, foresight, hindsight. These are the moments where Harmony shines, an experiment in narrative design in broad daylight that works surprisingly well. It’s not an idea that always works, mostly in the early stages of your adaptation to these new systems. This is a game whose original brilliance — from the richly animated cutscenes, Lena Raine’s beautiful ambient sounds, and powerful voice acting — fades into repetitive visuals, betrayed by the constraints of visual novel structure and asset reuse The ever-changing world around you as you play.
However, complaining about something like this feels trivial — and almost unfair in the circumstances we’ve been given. Harmony: The Fall of Reverie may be an experimental first attempt by Don’t Nod to peel back the veil of player choice and reveal the consequences and design of interactive fiction, but it’s such a first. The complexity of its characters is not flattened by the deliberate gamification and blueprinting of the story, but is enhanced by it, adding layers of depth not usually considered by reading between interdimensional lines.
Reverie breathes life into the human emotions that weave the stories of our everyday lives, turning them into entities with personalities that compliment the person who embodies them. You may never be part of this family, this world, the resistance against Mono Concern. But that’s because your presence in the “real” world, with all the complex entities and emotions of your own life, is what makes you human and affects your worldview.
The result of it all is Harmony: The Fall of Reverie is more than just a story to tell. It is a canvas to express your experiences and emotions in a cognitive dance through the innovative systems that make this possible. There is nothing else I’ve played like this.
