For today’s Real Good Games Revisited I’m turning a mirror at YOU, dear reader. Yes you. I know you haven’t played The Forgotten City because I’ve spoken to too many people who haven’t. Since it’s 2023 and we only care about anecdotal data I’m going to read deeply into that and shame all of YOU. How do you like it now?
Let’s lay on the guilt.
Part 1: Multi-path multi-solution’s all the rage these days. People like when choices matter. When you’re not walking on some pre-ordained path and no matter what you do, and no matter what you say or who you kill (we’re talking virtually here), you’re still revered as the wholly good heroic champion of the land. Let’s not dive too deep into how analogous this is or isn’t to the real world here. We’re a video game store. We’re not going to get TOO philosophical…
But The Forgotten City DOES get philosophical. There are deep concepts here about life, death, relationships, power, love, and so much more.
The game’s wild. Built originally as a Skyrim mod and expanded into its own title, it’s largely dialog-driven and set in a small…underground village. You can’t get out and every day is basically the same, like in Groundhog Day. You’re tasked with, well, that depends on the choices you make. You’re not from the town. You landed there. You clearly want to get out. Let’s leave it at that.
I found it to be a cozy game. One I could pick up each night, play a few hours, learn more about the stories, and think about my choices. I cared about the characters so much I broke one of my golden gaming rules: never reload an old save after learning the consequences of my actions. I did. I wanted to see the uber good ending for reasons we can discuss in the discord.
Part 2: Reviews. Those are validators, right? You don’t want to be someone who snubs a game with THAT many 9s and 10s. No. You don’t.
Part 3: Awards. Because large swaths of hand-picked people sitting around deciding what is good and what isn’t mostly makes sense. Plus, BAFTA.
So in closing just go buy the game. It’s great. If it’s also in your pile of ‘I haven’t played yet’ tell us a funny reason why in Discord and maybe we’ll give a few copies away.