It has been said that Terror was the force of the despotic government. Does yours resemble that of despotism? The government of the Revolution is the despotism of freedom against tyranny. How long will the violence of despots continue to be called justice, until when will the justice of the people be called barbarism or rebellion? How much tenderness with the oppressors, how much inflexibility with the oppressed! Anyone who does not absolutely hate crime cannot love virtue: nothing is more logical than this. Pity for innocence, pity for the weak, pity for the unfortunate, pity for humanity¹
Robespierre, M.
We are a judge in the early years of the French Revolution, we must fulfill our role with a convulsive society in need of justice as the goddess Temis does, with her eyes closed … or maybe not … The profound changes that are coming in France make that our decisions, both in court, and in private life favor or not the side of the Old Regime or the side of the revolutionaries so, what do you decide? Do you fear that your family will be persecuted by the Robespierre government? Or maybe you still feel the great influence of the monarchy? Polyslash, the developer, invites us to live these moments, since June 6 of this year on Nintendo Switch. But now we are going to be the one who judges the game this time, the court!
Argument
One of the strengths of this game is undoubtedly this section, not so much for telling us a specific story, but for drawing through multiple situations and environments the era of the French Revolution, its first years to be concrete, back in 1789. We interpret a judge of the time, who in principle wants to fulfill his obligations, but who soon realizes that his decisions can affect (and affect) even his own survival given the hot tensions between the different political groups. We will alternate phases in which we are told part of historical events, specific situations that could have occurred in the streets of Paris, with personal moments of our character, relationships with other family members, dinners, conversations, walks … As we say, We The Revolution has a great capacity to tell this story, rather “the” story: it is interesting and pushes you to continue playing, but, there may be a problem there.
Playability
We The Revolution is a decision-making game, we must make decisions, both judicial and personal, selecting the right option through windows, dialog boxes … without a time limit, with time stopped. The main objective is to stay alive trying to balance some bars that represent the level of affinity we have with each of the political sides of the moment, for this we must do anything, mocking the truth, justice and everything that is put in our hands . We will start with a tutorial in which we will be taught the controls that we should know and in which we are already seeing that this is a game to read a lot, and that, importantly, it is entirely in English. If you have a good level with the language this will not be a problem, but the understanding of the game itself will be.
In the most trivial, the game, as we say, we start from this first tutorial, sitting in the judge's chair, with a first-person view and we are roughly taught all the options we have to issue a verdict, we can read the case, witness statements, ask the culprit, look at evidence … There are options, but it is really funny to know how to do each thing well, or how each of these things influence so many others. If in the first case, the tutorial is simple (it goes, as a game, to judge your own child for a stupid one), limited and explanatory, imagine when things get complicated: many defendants, evidence, witnesses, more options … From time to time windows pop up automatically explaining certain actions, their repercussions … finally they only serve to stun a HUD loaded with options.
We The Revolution aims to be a complex game in which all the intrigues that happen in a trial and how they affect society are captured, but are lost in a sea of options, which, the first times we will not know how to face, and the latter we will be bored of them. It is true that the more we advance the more the cases of the trials will vary, daring with any type of subject, rapes, robberies, religious issues … and also the extrajudicial cases vary more, being increasingly detached from personal issues, even the mechanics and the game becomes at times a war simulator, something that far from bringing freshness (because in fact it is too late) makes the game genre totally blur.
Apart from not innovating in any case, We The Revolution fails in what is perhaps the most important thing for a decision-making game: it is not a game that satisfies playing. We will not be receiving any positive feedback when we make decisions, since we are not clear if they are correct and incorrect, it is a game without direction. You can make a game of political decision making deep in mechanics, highly convoluted, such as Democracy 3 or Plague Inc. (this to a lesser extent) in which the fun is in the long-term feedback, but that in the course of You get excited about the possibility that the project you have embarked on will succeed or not.
Also a simple game, like Reigns, in which everything is based on making “yes” or “no” decisions; short and highly satisfactory games, in which you immediately feel that your decisions affect the future. After having played enough hours I can assure that We The Revolution has “the worst” of both games, a convoluted mechanics that nevertheless try to have a short-term grace, result: having to try too hard to later not receive just satisfactory rewards. We know that these types of games try to establish their playability in «you decide the story» but we are lost when deciding what to do, if we should do one thing or another, what repercussions our actions have, or simply what actions are relevant to decide our path … a mess. It is a shame, because the game has a unique atmosphere and there is a remarkable interest in doing things well, as we said before in terms of its argument and especially in terms of its artistic design.
Graphics, sound and duration
If we can unleash something besides the argument is its aesthetic. Music and its artistic design make us see all the love and effort that has been behind the game. We move through sequences of static images with a very cubist style, often ordered as if it were a comic. The style chosen seems fabulous to us for the type of game we are playing, many times you get dumbfounded simply by admiring the art that the game has. The voices are completely in English and very well treated, giving you the necessary emotion at all times, rhetorical questions, epic moments … it is overwhelming at certain times Music for its part, is scarce, perhaps too much in the judgments, but it accompanies the moments well timely. We know that it is perhaps the most personal part of an analysis, that of aesthetic tastes, but we do not hesitate to say that if the game is worth it, it is for these moments, that they develop slowly but intensely; the taste for art and its special coherence with the historical / fictional narration carried out by We The Revolution has captivated us. What is in between no.
It lasts about 15 hours, there are 30 chapters in which small self-closing plots are closed. It has several endings depending on how our influence meter has finished. We do not find the appropriate duration for this type of games, but in this case we have become long.
conclusion
Robespierre now proposed, on behalf of the Jacobins, that he be forced to appear before the Convention, and sentenced to death as a traitor to the nation. A formal trial should not be held, he demanded in a famous speech, since the king had already been tried by the people in arms:
“The right to punish the tyrant and the right to dethrone him are the same thing; they don't take different forms. ”
Since the people had already issued their judgment, the Convention should be limited to registering the death sentence. Although accepting part of this argument, the Assembly decided in favor of a trial, but in which she would be both prosecutor and judge. Many Girondian deputies wished to save the king's life, but such was the weight of the evidence against Luis – an iron chest containing his secret correspondence had never been discovered in the Tuileries – who decided to join their votes to the unanimous guilty verdict. ²
In the end, we are not fair either, in We The Revolution that is what that judge, nor was Robespierre really … I mean that it is clear that this is a subjective point of view, like any other, and we all have our reasons to feel that something is worth it or not, but it is that We The Revolution seemed to me lazy at the point that it should be less, be fun, and that makes us have to tip the balance more towards the negative than towards the positive when we are talking about a game .
However, for those who like this historical era (as I do on the other hand) and do not mind being certainly contemplative (in the most prosaic sense of the term), you will greatly enjoy their art and their capacity for environmental communication, no doubt Your great values. It is not the game that I would recommend to enter the genre either, it is for those who want to spin fine if you have already played something similar. Do not expect an Ace Attorney, of course, even if everything is mainly about trials, there are no shots.
We The Revolution costs € 19.99, is available in digital format on the eShop and occupies 2584 MB.
one. On the Principles of Political Morality, Robespierre, M. Digital text, Link
two. French revolution, Rudé, G. Digital text, Link
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