Scouring Abzu's marine paradise opens an argument for emotive communication and softened storytelling. Too often, however, Abzu is less a defense of its beliefs and more a negotiation out of a cornered medium.
Abzu makes a powerful first impression. As an anonymous diver in a deserted, ambient world, it’s just you and cerulean water as far as the eye can see. Caught between a cel-shading paradise and photorealistic retreat, Abzu opens as a picturesque vision of isolation in the middle of the ocean. Even when it’s idling, Abzu is gorgeous.
Diving below the water sets Abzu in motion. Austin Wintory’s moving score kicks in (and never leaves), fluorescent schools of fish appear, and there’s a curious cave off there in the distance. Who are you? What are you? Why are you here? Where’s everyone else? How can I get over there? What happened? These are questions that naturally drive exploratory games like Abzu. Its opening moments state its goals in sequence.
Awareness of Abzu’s development lineage gives away its intentions. The development team at Giant Squid is helmed by Matt Nava, formerly art director at thatgamecompany. Nava’s name may not be as well-known as some of his former coworkers, but his production now defines an entire aesthetic. Journey’s use of light, color, and stylish texture work made sand look gorgeous, and Flower’s back-and-forth between fantasy and photorealism skillfully communicated both tragedy and optimism. Abzu applies the same design sensibilities to underwater life and the mystery of oceans and the abyss.
Comparisons to Abzu may be quick and easy, but they’re not without merit. The diver has a single button to interact with specific objects in her world. Each environment makes room for a modest amount of exploration, but ultimately funnels her into a new set of environments. As Journey had its ski-slope hills of sand, Abzu operates breakneck tunnels of flowing water. Narrative is equal parts absorption and imagination, with an escalating series of environmental clues meant to set up the answers to the questions it can’t stop asking.
Comparisons to Journey are comfortable and it is impossible to avoid them. With that in mind, Abzu performs a number of flourishes to create its own style. Scattered throughout every environment are pockets of pink circles, and interacting with them releases a different species of aquatic life back into Abzu’s biome. Occasionally, the player will have to explore the environment to find a clearly-marked chains in order to open a door. There are things to do inside Abzu’s underwater vistas, but they feel like nascent goals in service to dioramic showcase. Abzu is more interested in indulging and exploring hand-crafted environments.
While not a technical showcase, Abzu remains one of the better looking games on the Switch platform. Rather than an endless stream of repeating blue water, Abzu makes room for pink and yellow coral reefs, eerie and dark navy-blue depths, and sun-soaked ruins laced with overgrown flora. Abzu refuses to repeat its visual tricks, and it’s always eager to lead the player somewhere different, usually framing a new area with a perfect debut camera angle. You emerge from a tunnel and, wow, what’s out there begs to be enjoyed and explored.
Abzu is wildly emotive but not especially enduring. Gazing at all the different creatures (and occasionally hitching a ride on one) was a novelty that sharply wore off. Even the giant whales, the likes of which really put the diver’s size into perspective, were only briefly captivating when the swam past. The ruins of a lost civilization (Atlantis? Our own? A future society? An alien planet? These are interesting questions!) were conceptually alluring, but ultimately buckled in their uniformity. Abzu frequently presents the player with option to sit on a rock and meditate, providing a splendid view of their surroundings in the form of a 3D aquarium, but the function was only a novelty. Its call for Zen didn’t appeal to my particular sensibilities. I was happy to pass through but I didn’t want to stay.
Outside of basic exploration, Abzu lights a few prominent fires to guide the player. The first is the diver’s relationship with a mischievous great white shark, a form of antagonism present through most of Abzu’s runtime. The other is threatening remnants of a weakened opposing force, menacing alien structures that appear to have sucked the life away from the ocean floor. The shark’s purpose grows obvious, but the indistinct hostility that drives the foreign malevolence remains an object of intrigue.
The presence of a sole being of sentience, obtuse machinery, the absence of modern humanity—many of Abzu’s themes and keystones parallel Arthur C. Clarke’s short story Rescue Party. Going into the specifics of the story more or less spoil significant parts of Abzu, but I wanted to briefly compliment the game on providing a clever analog in an interactive medium. That’s not easy to do, and I wasn’t entirely aware of its connection until I sat down to write this review.
What I couldn’t reconcile, however, was the feeling that I had already accomplished the bulk of Abzu before I ever played Abzu. It’s not just Journey, but rather a composite of like-minded underwater exploration games like Everblue 2, Aquanaut’s Holiday, and both of the Wii’s Endless Ocean entries. These aren’t exactly like Abzu, but their focus on observation and relegation of traditional “videogame goals” as secondary spoke much of the same language. Abzu may have the most beautiful creatures under the sea, but I couldn’t shake the notion that I had already seen all of them elsewhere.
I don’t think Abzu necessarily benefits from being interactive. Controlling the diver on three axes has a certain charm to it, and her strokes even have a discernible rhythm to make them faster, but it feels in service to little other than forward progress. All of the questions Abzu asked could have been answered by someone else playing the game in front of me. This doesn’t make it bad! But, as is the risk with games that place narrative ahead of traditional player/game relationship, Abzu isn’t especially fun to play and engage.
Critiquing Abzu’s capability or referencing its spiritual predecessors may be a moot point in light of Abzu’s running time. I wasn’t keeping a close eye on the clock, but it took fewer than three hours for me to complete. For what Abzu is trying to do, this amount of time is perfect. It doesn’t go down the rabbit hole with exposition, instead leaving the player with a small but potent amount of information to complement its adventure. If I were to think of one hundred labels for Abzu, “inoffensive” would be the one of the highest.
Abzu’s performance on the Switch felt identical to its 2016 debut on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Its presence, however, seemed noticeably weakened. It’s easy to assign this feeling to a second trip through a game that is highly dependent on the surprise and awe of a maiden voyage, but this time Abzu felt more like a sightseeing tour than a journey through mystique and wonder. Exploring Abzu’s world still raises questions and challenges the player to come up with their own responses. Validity isn’t in contention, but rather how many of Abzu’s ideas still submit to convention. Its flaws are more noticeable on the second time around.
It is not a sin to put storytelling and intrigue above interaction and engagement. Abzu is successful in telling a sophisticated story inside of a game, I just wish its power had been used for surprise instead of satisfaction.
