The Uncertain: Light At The End | Recensione (PC)

To start, a little yellow: The Uncertain: Light At The End is the continuation of The Uncertain: Last Quiet Day, game developed and published by New Game Order in 2016. This second episode also bears their signature on the Steam page dedicated to the game. However, looking on the Internet for information about the study, there are references only to Comongames LLC, the Russian developer who presents Light at the End in the portfolio of its official website (and also publishes the trailer on Youtube). So is it a title whose development has been outsourced? Was New Game Order dismantled and reconstituted as ComonGames? Is the information reported by Steam not up to date or is it the search engines that are lacking?

UPDATE: I contacted the distributor to solve the puzzle. META Publishing confirmed to me the name change of New Game Order to ComonGames LLC, which is therefore the same developer. Therefore the discrepancy is due to a failure to update the information within the Steam store.

The nebulosity that hovers over the paternity of the game is, in some ways, a mirror of the general uncertainty that afflicts the title: narrative uncertainty, technical uncertainty and design uncertainty, defects that irremediably undermine the gaming experience, from which just a few suggestions can be saved.

Where to start

As mentioned, this title is the second chapter of what should be a trilogy. The stories told in the two games, however, are only marginally connected, which is why it is not necessary to have experience of the first episode to approach the second (this is my case).

The setting is a post-apocalyptic dystopia: in the near future, humanity and robots have lived together in harmony for years, the latter dependent on the former. For unknown reasons, one day, however, the machines rebelled against their creators, starting a mass purge: the few surviving humans have lived in hiding ever since, far from the cities now abandoned to the control of the androids. If in the first episode we follow the events of RT, a robot who does not recognize the legitimate behavior of his fellow men and takes sides with humans, in Light at the End we play the role of Emily, a young fugitive who lives with a small core of survivors, a sort of improvised and dysfunctional family, in constant struggle for survival.

The members of this community have different backgrounds and skills (ranging from Park, a young music lover, to Olga, a mother in constant apprehension for her newborn, to Alex and Brian, elderly members of the group, united by the memory of their pre-accident life. and who face the present in antithetical ways (anger and despair on the one hand, resilience and proactivity on the other). Although no character is deepened that much, during the adventure we will have the opportunity to interact with each of them, through dialogues interesting even if rather stereotyped.

zero degree

We are not faced with an example of narrative originality: the game plot - which at the end of the game remains incomplete and projected towards a final chapter in charge of shedding light once and for all on the cause of the robot revolt - is not only structured through a canvas seen and reviewed in almost any dystopian fictional work of the last 30 years (from The Shadow of the Scorpion to The Walking Dead), but in its short duration (just over 4 hours) it is not even innervated by original developments of the plot, detailed psychological insights or spectacular action sequences.

The word that seems to me best suited to summarize the narrative of Light at the End is "flatness": a recycling of stylistic elements - both in the unraveling of the plot and in the writing of the characters and dialogues - coming from 50 years and more of post-apocalyptic sci-fi, of which the title represents a shy little book unable to offer anything new, and doesn't even try. There is also the aggravating circumstance of inconclusiveness: recourse to the open ending is fine, with a view to developing an already announced final chapter, but the writers have not made the slightest effort to put at least some full stop in the story, which simply stops without particular climax, in a way more bland than any game released in episodes. Who makes us wait years to enjoy the end of a story that leaves no expectations about its possible conclusions? Sure, you may be curious to find out the truth about the cause of the android rebellion, but nothing I've witnessed makes me think that this revelation will be particularly original or engaging compared to what I've seen so far.

Location you go, puzzle you find

The gameplay certainly offers greater satisfaction, while showing the side of the same problems of approximation. The Uncertain: Light At The End is an adventure game that looks like something out of the nineties. Giving up any action component, the design provides for the exploration of different locations of medium-small size - mainly indoor environments - in which to fulfill various tasks (for example, recover medical supplies, activate a radio system or escort our friends in hostile territory) through typical point-and-click mechanics. Exploring the environment around us we will see prompts appear on the screen corresponding to interactable objects, which we can examine or collect, using them to solve environmental puzzles that will allow us to advance on a physical and narrative level. The design of the locations is essential but still aesthetically pleasing, and the desolation of the places can bring to mind the melancholy scenarios of The Last Of Us or, to stay on the subject of 90s adventures, Siberia.

The concatenation of the actions to be taken to advance will never be something abstruse or hard to understand, indeed it will hardly force pauses to reflect on what to do: given the small size of the spaces in which you move, the elements with which to interact are never many , as well as for the range of possible actions. To enrich the experience there is a puzzle component, which personally represented the most positive part of the whole experience: these are logical-mathematical puzzles that we will be occasionally forced to tackle (sometimes justified on a narrative level in a barely credible way).

In these situations we will have to deal with various types of panels, for example control panels or electronic interfaces, to be reconfigured correctly to bypass safety systems, restore power or repair damaged objects. The logic behind these minigames is nothing new (there are obvious derivations from The Witness, for example), but all in all they are satisfactory, also because they represent the only real moments of challenge offered to the player. Furthermore, these puzzles can be bypassed at any time, avoiding the unaccustomed player the frustration of getting stuck.

For the rest, the only situation capable of causing a critical failure involving a repetition of a game phase is represented by QTE moments, in which however The Uncertain: Light At The End proves to be very generous in terms of the amount of time needed to provide the required command input. In fact, these brief moments constitute an attempt to vary the playful offer with the minimum effort on the part of the developers, but they end up arousing more tedium than engagement.

Precarious balance

The Uncertain: Light At The End is a lame title on a technical and interface level. Let's start with the latter: the game screen is very clean and has no HUD. In the early stages of the adventure we will be provided with an electronic device that will act as an inventory, audio and text-log, camera and game console (yes, there are collectible minigames scattered around the maps, but they are nothing more than very short simplified versions of classic arcade mechanics). It's a pity that even in this basic aspect of game design there are problems, such as cut texts that prevent a complete reading of the diary. This is certainly a problem that can be solved with an update by the developers, but the fact that it has not yet been resolved (the title has been on the store for months now) speaks volumes about the sense of neglect that the title suffers from.

This general sloppiness emerges forcefully in the audio sector, the most problematic of all: as far as the soundtrack is concerned, it consists of just a couple of ambient musical themes, which provide a sound carpet to large segments of the game without ever varying, regardless of what happens on the screen: thus strong frictions are created between the unfolding of events on the screen, which from time to time would like to be dramatic rather than tense or frenetic, and the impassivity of the music that goes its own way, regardless of its function as a commentary or counterpoint to the visual component of the experience. Added to this are the rather frequent bugs that cut the jokes of voice actors, soon breaking any degree of involvement. Also because the dubbing work is at a minimum in terms of actor interpretation, once again referring to the nineties for the perceived "woodiness" in the recitation of the lines.

Final judgement

The Uncertain: Light At The End is not a title capable of offering the player a new, original experience or even just enough engaging or fun to warrant proof. In the face of some well-made puzzle, the work is compromised by numerous technical deficiencies and, above all, by a narrative of an unbearable banality. To revive the fortunes of the series, a third chapter would be needed that marks a decisive change of pace both from the point of view of writing and design. I am ready to be amazed, even if given the premises it is really difficult to put faith in the conclusion of the project.