Ragnar Tørnquist may not be among the most well-known game designers nowadays, but his contributions to the adventure genre cannot be overstated, as his works with games such as The Longest Journey helped the genre move forward when the point-and-click formula started dying out. After founding Red Thread Games in 2012 and releasing multiple entries in the Dreamfall Chapters, the Norwegian game designer is about to release, together with his development team Dustborn, an adventure game that tries to do things differently to present a better, rounded-up and more compelling experience.
In Dustborn, players control Pax, an Anomal con-artist who has the power to weaponize language. Looking to create a new life in an alternate history America, she was hired to transport an important package to Nova Scotia, which she will have to keep safe with the help of a crew comprising a rather colorful crew with unique abilities. Despite the preview version I had the chance to try out was set a few hours into the adventure, my playtime with it made it clear how character development and interactions will be among the game’s most developed features. Controlling Pax, players will have a lot of chances to interact with the other characters, develop relationships with them, and come to understand them better. These relationships are developed with a straightforward branching dialogue system that is pretty similar to similar systems seen in other adventure games.
When not interacting with other characters, players will explore a variety of closed-off, linear locations in Dustborn, controlling Pax from a third-person camera view as she searches for clues and objects to help her solve whatever conundrum she and her crew encounter. Much like in dialogues, players can make different choices that will shape the outcome of select scenarios, opting, for example, to ask for the help of a certain character instead of another. In the preview scenario, set in a service station in the middle of a desert, Pax can ask either Theo or Sai, a girl afflicted with vitiligo, to open a door by lock-picking it or using brute force, respectively. These types of interactions were everywhere in the preview version, and they helped immensely in getting to know and care for the crew, although writing did not feel particularly inspired. It does its job reasonably well, no doubt about it, but it’s not really a standout feature.
Where Dustborn seems like it will deliver is the adventuring gameplay. The game makes it really easy to discover new elements needed to proceed through the story, and while most of the interactions are not particularly innovative, they are varied enough, and some are objectively cool, like the one where Pax has to guide Sai with her voice to help her drop a massive tire in a specific location to burn it down. Later on, to make other examples, Pax will have to distract a service robot to steal a bottle of whiskey to create a Molotov cocktail and throw a few of them in a more action-oriented sequence at a gang of bikers. All this, coupled with the dominant comic book aesthetics, which can be appreciated even more by the ability to control the camera at pretty much every time and alternate 90s setting, gives Dustborn a peculiar feel.
Sadly, it’s in the more action-oriented sequences that Dustborn falters. Fighting enemies in the game is, simply put, not that fun. Moving and attacking feel terribly unresponsive, the animations are stiff, and the mechanics rather basic, as Pax can essentially only unleash simple short-range and long-range attacks, which don’t feel impactful at all. The special power that allows Pax to weaponize words essentially gives her a chance to push enemies away, force some of them to attack their companions and force other conditions which did not feel particularly inspired in the preview version. Combination attacks performed by multiple characters are also in, and they look nice enough, although I never felt the need while fighting enemies to do anything more than swing Pax’s unique bat around and dodge the occasional attack.
Having had the chance to experience less than two hours of the game, I cannot say if Dustborn’s best features will be enough to make up for its weaknesses. While the setting, story, characters, and varied gameplay sequences have potential, and the adventure game mechanics feel solid enough despite not being particularly inspired, the action-oriented sequences and the combat system felt clunky and not particularly fun to play. With more surprises waiting for Pax and her crew on the road, however, Dustborn may prove to be a much better game than what it felt like in my limited time with it when it launches on August 20th on PC, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S and Xbox One.
