Gosh, remember Republique? In 2012 respected gaming industry veterans formed Camouflaj with the intention of a real game for mobile devices and tablets, platforms typically defined by time wasters and/or predatory microtransactions. Republique won a photo-finish Kickstarter in 2012 with the earnest intention to deliver five separate episodes. The first, Exordium, made it out at the end of 2013. The follow-up, Metamorphosis, followed six months later, with the third, Ones and Zeroes, sneaking by in October 2013. Then Republique disappeared.
Camouflaj was reasonably transparent about Republique’s absence. They signed a deal to bring the complete game to the PlayStation 4, and a “remastered” PC version of the three existing episodes arrived last February. Finally, the fourth episode, God’s Acre, debuted a few days before Christmas. Time had eroded my personal interest in seeing where Republique’s story was heading—at the outset I only recall gifted woman trapped in a vaguely 1984 prison facility—but I retained an academic interest in the project. After over a year away, where was Republique heading? When it got there, would anyone still be waiting?
Interacting with God’s Acre serves as a neat reset for Republique’s audience. Mechanics and level design that once seemed so intrinsic to Republique’s brand—making use of your OMNI device’s myriad of functions to sneak past guards and through the metamorphosis facility—have kind of been tossed away. A broken OMNI may seem like a betrayal of Republique’s core tenants, especially if you had been investing in upgrades via the in-game store, but it better serves lapsed players. God’s Acre performs the same actions with noticeably less heft. It feels built for efficiency, a lesson that could conceivably only be learned four-deep in an episodic series.
Republique’s signature trick, hacking into an incredible amount of security cameras, remains its central mechanic. You don’t actually play as Hope as much as you shuffle through different cameras and direct her walking path. Gone are the posh totalitarian facilities and prowling guards, and in their place are a rainy garden and a singular enemy. Most of your time in God’s Acre will be spent playing keep away with Hope against humongous human being called Mammoth. He’ll mostly just putz around and talk to himself in different voices while Hope, ostensibly, tries to further her escape from the complex.
There are a few other things to do in this process. Certain objects in the environment will have a camera icon, and Hope can zoom in on these objects with her camera and listen to a bit of background on the item in question. Petri dishes, of all things, also tell stories of characters both new and familiar, and there are still plenty of cassette tapes and banned books kicking around the periphery. By its very nature there isn’t a lot of space to cover in God’s Acre, but it makes good use of what’s there.
A palpable negative to God Acre’s efficiency is a significant reduction in general challenge. Mammoth isn’t exactly difficult to avoid, and environmental noisemakers, bees flying around plants or mouthy pigeons, are easily avoided if you’re paying attention. Even picking up collectables off the edges of the environment isn’t enough to break a sweat. There also isn’t much of a penalty for getting caught by Mammoth, as it usually drops Hope off at a checkpoint with all of your present accomplishments intact. I’m sure there was a push and pull with the level of difficulty behind God’s Acre, and Camouflaj was certainly correct in erring it toward accessibility, but the weight of consequence is sorely missed.
I also have no idea what happened to Hope’s characterization. Her naiveté was a defining trait of the first three episodes, and it would be wrong to expect she’d undergo a major personality change in Republique’s relatively short runtime, but in God’s Acre Hope appears to operate with the mind of a ten year old. There’s something interesting about her childlike wonder in the face of her grim circumstances, but it’s somehow manifested in cringe-worthy dialogue and/or a misdirected performance. The Fascism For Beginners theme doesn’t do God’s Acre any favors, either.
It’s possible I was expecting too much from God’s Acre. With the minds behind it and its ambition for its (original) platform, it’s still an admirable accomplishment. The last sequence, in which Hope has to navigate a hedge maze amid Mammoth clipping his way through said maze, is actually quite good, and makes great use of the game’s quick camera-switching signature. The ending is a real shocker too, and I genuinely have no idea what direction they’re heading with the final piece of Republique on the horizon.
Penultimate episodes (as we’ve seen in Life is Strange and season one of The Walking Dead) have a tendency to kind of spin their wheels before a grand finale. Maybe this is why God’s Acre can’t get traction. It would explain why the dueling scientist lore dumps feel like they were created specifically to avoid addressing bigger questions. It could also be why everything feels so contained and, relative to the rest of Republique, sterile.
As a single episode of a larger project, God’s Acre is tough to recommend. The PC release of Republique arrives as a complete package, making the dilemma of purchasing an episode you don’t necessarily want, non-existent. It also, thankfully, lets you skip episodes, which I happily did with the first three after having playing them on my phone in 2013. Time will tell if God’s Acre is the portion of Republique you skip over before getting to its fifth episode. Before, and hopefully after, Republique has done much better.
