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We went on a supernatural road trip across North America with a newly formed band in Dustborn.
The year is 2030. The world is populated by people with supernatural vocal abilities, so-called vox. One day, the protagonist Pax is given the task of bringing a USB stick containing important secret data from the US West Coast to Nova Scotia in Canada. Pax is an orphan and had to flee her sheltered home to Pacifica, a futuristic version of California, when he was a teenager. In the historiography of the action adventure, US President John F. Kennedy was never murdered, but rather his wife Jackie. Marilyn Monroe became the new First Lady and is still alive at 104 years old. Pax teams up with the guitar-playing former software engineer and agent Theo, the strong-willed humorous powerhouse Sai and the clever semi-mechanical Noam. The group uses the indie band The Dust Born as a cover and tours throughout the Republic. While they are chased by Puritans in Pacifica, they are also subjected to constant security checks in the Republic – after all, Justice is in charge of this police state.
On their journey they meet numerous characters, some of whom join them, such as Pax’s sister and ex-anarcho-primitivist Ziggy or the former member of the Horned Riders biker gang Eli. They all have one thing in common – they are Anomals, which some also disparagingly call Deviants. Especially in the first half of the game, we learn a lot about the backgrounds and motivations of the individual characters, for example by listening to the conversations around the campfire or in the tour bus, which is driven by the lovable robot Caretaker (CT). However, as the game progresses, additional characters overcrowd the group. Dustborn consists largely of dialogue that we can influence, and all your decisions are intended to lead to different endings. Each character has different personalities that you can influence through your actions, which is visualized through overlays. During our 20-hour run, Justice employees remembered our previous actions and thus suspected us. A careful approach pays off time and time again, giving you additional conversation options and strengthens your team spirit.
Building bridges is a theme that runs like a common thread through Dustborn. Everywhere we meet confused people who react with hatred. Pax owns a 90s handheld that never really took off, the ME-EM. She can use it to track down Echoes and capture them in Ghostbusters-style. Echoes are hateful messages that were once spread across the continent and have stuck in people’s minds. Once you’ve collected enough of them, you can improve your fighting skills, because as soon as diplomacy fails, Pax will also use brute force against Justice, Puritans and bikers. She’s able to throw her trusty baseball bat to attack flying drones and crush entire groups of opponents as she progresses. Her numerous Vox abilities push enemies back, incite or paralyze them. Taunts let her hit harder, blocking and rolling are available as well and the tag team attacks look well choreographed. The fights are far too easy and the use of Pax’s screams is usually not necessary. Individual boss fights are interestingly designed, but overall combat doesn’t have much depth and the frequency of the fights can be adjusted at the beginning of the game.
Outside of combat and dialogue, we can also move freely to a certain extent. We explore an abandoned shopping center, the former home of Pax and Ziggy, a trailer park which houses a dark secret and individual districts of the metropolises that we visit on our journey. The environments are all beautifully designed and full of details. Especially in the context of the story, it is exciting to visit the robot factory where CT comes from. However, the game will not fully satisfy your urge to explore, after all, it is not an open-world game like Red Dead Redemption II. Though one element has been adopted from Rockstar’s western epic – the relaxed conversations around the campfire. At the end of each day, we reflect on the events within the group, hand out gifts and learn a lot about each individual character. However, the fact that the conversations of the non-player characters (NPCs) are briefly interrupted by almost every action we take and then start again diminishes the authentic atmosphere. Secondary storylines, such as the tragic fate of a robo-cashier in an abandoned supermarket or the dark secrets that are revealed by exploring a Fallout-like vault, add to the experience.
The game’s voice-over is only available in English, but the texts have been well translated into other languages. While the general quality of dialogue and the voice-over is high, there are also fluctuations and a few logic holes, but overall the game tells an exciting story that can motivate you to stick with it until the end. Graphically, Red Thread Games relies on a comic-like look with decent looking characters and backgrounds, though the animations and clipping could’ve used some additional polish. Text boxes, inserts and a literal comic book which reflects on what’s happened in each of the game’s ten chapters tie into the comic aesthetics. Simon Poole’s score adds pulsating electronic music to boss fights and the symphonies of the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra support important plot points. In rhythm mini-games you perform each of The Dust Born’s gigs, which are not particularly challenging for those who’ve played similar games. While the four rock songs’ lyrics tie well into the game’s narrative, we’re not 100% convinced by their musical quality. However, this circumstance can be justified by the fact that The Dust Born is an up-and-coming young band that only exists as a cover.
Conclusion
Dustborn is a narrative action adventure which incorporates many interesting ideas. While the setting of a road trip across a country governed by an authoritarian regime was already depicted in Road 96, Dustborn takes a slightly different approach and also includes combat which offers little challenge and feels too samey after a while. While the boss fights are mildly more interesting, Pax’s Vox abilities are almost superfluous in combat and it feels like they appear too excessively in dialogue. They also make Pax appear as an unlikable manipulative screamer.
The game addresses many topics of our time, such as online hate, mental health, diversity and social justice in a respectful way for the most part, can feel a bit bold and simple at times though. Despite the serious subject matter, the events are oftentimes lightened up with a sprinkle of humor. While in similar games we often miss consequences to our actions, NPCs in Dustborn react to your decisions. Collecting echoes with the ME-EM, a brief turn-based RPG encounter and arcade machines ensure variety in gameplay in this otherwise dialogue-driven game. If you like to play narrative games like Road 96, Tales from the Borderlands or the games from Quantic Dream, who act as publishers here, Dustborn may be worth your time.
Quantic Dream provided us with PC code for Dustborn which we used to capture the screenshots.