Fascism has always been fought with weapons and words alike, but the two approaches are more complementary and not directly intertwined. Italian dictator Benito Mussolini was not dethroned via aggressive poetry, after all. Dustborn, however, is an action adventure game set in a dystopian United States that turns words into literal weapons and, while a novel concept for a game, its wordplay is nowhere near sharp enough to be wielded in such a fashion.
Dustborn’s weak wit is pervasive and taints just about every aspect of the experience, from its combat to its dialogue, the latter of which is particularly damning because of its focus on narrative. Its diverse group of misfits brings a host of different perspectives to the conflict and shows how widespread the fight for freedom is, yet the grating cast is unable to fulfill its promise. Their constant yapping is never funny and rarely endearing, making most attempts to humanize each member ring hollow. It is exhausting to hear an unending stream of filler lines and a far cry from the games like Marvel’s Guardian of the Galaxy and the Uncharted series that skillfully use their many words. Dustborn is neither efficient nor entertaining enough to justify its elongated runtime.
Dustborn's Dialogue Is Only Part Of The Problem
The poor pacing of the painfully unskippable dialogue is just part of Dustborn’s broader narrative issues. Cruising through a divided country in decline gives developer Red Thread Games room to show its own spin on how authoritarian rule could manifest in the United States. Disinformation and polarization play a key role in its downward spiral and give Dustborn the potential to be a convincing allegory, since it’s, sadly, rather plausible.
However, instead of diving into how people get fooled into rooting for cold-blooded strongmen and the oppressive systems that prop them up, it hand-waves away all nuance by blaming the discord on mysterious orbs called Echoes that delude their victims and make them paranoid. Pinning sophisticated societal problems on bursts of invisible signals deprives Dustborn of its ability to have a poignant message, since that shortcut robs the game of any real substance or deep thoughts to dissect. It is baffling to blame the downfall of a republic on a small ghostly ball that essentially macrodoses its target with fake news. While its progressive and anti-fascist ideals are noble, its shallow interpretation of authoritarianism and unwillingness to look beneath the surface strips away its ability to be a meaningful parable.
The Echoes are partially responsible for the game’s disastrous final act, since these spheres act as a weird conduit to a prehistoric language that is overexplained with technobabble that tries to tie it all to some bigger picture it does not need. These incoherent plot lines sit alongside the rushed last half of the road trip that glosses over hundreds of miles in an attempt to speed to the finale and a few bad twists it does not properly build up to. Dustborn’s unfocused narrative mistakes complexity for quality and would be better served with something simpler that doesn’t have as many opportunities to underdeliver. Even the ability to use words violently or coercively — the defining superpower many of its protagonists have that makes them an oppressed out-group — in dialogue exchanges is inconsistent, as it arbitrarily decides when they’ll work.
Dustborn's Combat Lacks Depth
Dustborn’s sporadic story is, unlike many of its gameplay-lite genre peers, paired with an equally messy combat system. Melee brawls are dragged down by stiff controls and a lack of options, meaning every fight is a repetitive slog that plays out like the last. Characters also consistently blather on during battle and restart their lines after every special move, which ensures that Dustborn’s annoying dialogue infects yet another aspect of the experience. It’s truly telling that the game asks players if they want less combat after the first real encounter.
And because Dustborn is bloated with all sorts of systems and aspects it doesn’t need, it’s also got a bland rhythm mini-game. It’s not nearly as troubled as the melee combat, but its inability to properly tutorialize how to unlock new songs makes it too easy to go through the whole game playing the same mediocre track over and over. The group’s cover as a band is gossamer thin anyway and leads to a handful of ridiculous or tacked-on scenarios that call into question the need for these musical components.
Dustborn’s rhythm mini-game is just another way the game demonstrates how underdeveloped it all is. Its terribly paced narrative is married to an elementary view of authoritarianism and stars an irritating crew that never stops talking. Combat is woefully simplistic and lacks the necessary smooth controls. None of its systems fit together coherently, either, because they’re all underbaked in one way or another and, in some cases, plagued by glitches. It’s hard for Dustborn to fight the power when it’s too busy fighting with itself at every turn.
Dustborn
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 66 /100 Critics Rec: 46%
- Released
- August 20, 2024
- Developer(s)
- Red Thread Games
- Publisher(s)
- Quantic Dream
- Engine
- Unity
WHERE TO PLAY
Dustborn is a single-player, story-driven action-adventure game about hope, love, friendships, robots…and the power of words.
You play Pax: exile, con-artist, Anomal — with the ability to weaponize language. Looking for a new life and a way out, Pax has been hired to transport an important package from Pacifica to Nova Scotia, across the Justice-controlled American Republic. Sounds like a legit reason for a road-trip, right?
So pack your bags, assemble a crew with their own peculiar powers, and get ready to travel the country!
Explore the stunning Neo-Western landscapes of an alternate history America on a robot-driven tour bus, and stop at a dozen locations along the road to build your crew, manage relationships, complete missions, and face increasingly difficult challenges. But the people you stole the package from want it back, and the authoritarian Justice is hot on your heels, so don’t forget to pack your baseball bat!
(And, oh yeah, you’re travelling undercover as a punk-rock band, so you’ll definitely need to brush up on your musical skills before your next gig.)
At the end of the road lies salvation…but to get there, you’ll need to cross an entire continent.
- Genre(s)
- Adventure
- The diverse cast's goal of fighting back is noble
- Its dialogue is irritating and never lets up
- The bloated narrative is full of poor or meaningless beats
- Buggy
- Combat is extremely shallow
- Its interpretation of fascism is too simplistic
Dustborn launches August 20, 2024 for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S. The Best War Games was provided with a PC code for this review.