Throughout my tenure as a video game writer, spanning over 20 years, one of the more delightful elements of choice for me in gameplay design has been branching narratives. While I think this harkens back to my enjoyment of Choose Your Own Adventure books in the 1980s, where you get to choose the fate of the character you’re reading about, I think it goes deeper than that where I need to be in control. I think there are a lot of type A personalities that can relate out there. Being in control can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how you treat it.
Anyway, that need gets kicked up a notch when I play any type of game that features a branching narrative as part of its design. That’s one reason I love Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic so much, as it’s a game that allows you to dictate how easy or difficult your time is in the SW world by the choices you make. Plus, it’s super cool becoming a Sith slowly and torturing your crew mates.
*AHEM* Back to the review.
Having the ability to take chances and make impactful choices, good or bad, should always be in the hand of the gamer in my opinion. It’s what separates games from movies, the interactivity between game and gamer makes for a meaningful and worthwhile journey. Who wouldn’t want to experience that? It’s why branching narrative games are such a delight. Well, most of the time.
To my point, recently DON’T NOD released Harmony: The Fall of Reverie, the devs’ own interactive visual novel that puts branching narrative choices at the crux of their gameplay design. How those choices are made is fascinating, as the devs put a branching flowchart of sorts in the hands of the gamer and basically show off the consequences of those actions in beautifully animated sequences. This game may not be for everyone out there, but it’s a shining example of how branching narrative gameplay design can be redesigned and executed very well.
So, shall we get this going? Or not?
Too late.
Official Synopsis
In the very near future… When Polly returns home after a few years abroad, to look for her missing mother, she quickly realizes that her hometown has drastically changed. A megacorporation named MK is using its power to control the population, and her community is in danger.
She soon discovers that she has a gift of clairvoyance that connects her to Reverie, the realm of the Aspirations of Humanity: Glory, Bliss, Power, Chaos, Bond, and Truth. In this world, Polly becomes Harmony, a goddess who has the power to choose the Aspiration that will ultimately rule over Reverie and restore the delicate balance between the deities’ world and ours.
Thoughts About the Story
As the game started, I wasn’t sure I was going to necessarily hook into the storyline as much as I eventually did. When it began, it felt like an empty payoff where someone wanted me to feel sorry for another without telling me the whole story. Don’t worry, I have empathy towards others, but wanting to know the entire story so that I could justify the empathy and eventual attachment to Polly wasn’t a big ask, and it certainly didn’t take long. Her plight to find her missing mom was absolutely devastating, as you can see, she struggled to understand why her mother was out of the picture and what in the world could have happened to her. True panic in the eyes and dialogue helped sell the initial problem at hand.
And that problem started taking other complicated shapes for Polly, which opened the world as we know it to another world that no one knows – Reverie.
I was pleasantly shocked how the devs mixed in a fantasy adventure with some head-scratching Baron Munchausen-esque characters that were meaningful as they were off-the-wall (not all silly, but mostly silly) bonkers. Creative and cool might be the better phrase here for the residents of Reveries, who were basic emotions and moments personified into humans. That is clever when you’re wanting to reinforce these gods and goddesses. Anyway, Polly spends a good portion of her time dealing with gods and monsters from Reverie, as she is pulled into the world thanks to a necklace her mom left behind and is deemed a powerful goddess named Harmony. Reverie is such a strange and interesting world that is the opposite of the one Polly is from. That makes it fascinating. Back to the story, the residents of Reverie are equally as interested in finding Polly’s mother and equally interested in Polly’s journey as Harmony.
The other half of Polly’s time in the game is spent making choices in the real world and navigating the oppressive MK, who makes people disappear and shakes enough of its population up to create a solid foundation of obedience. How that side of the story is laid out is all driven by the actors, well-written script, and the gorgeous, though frightening at times animation. And the actors really do sell the dialogue which was pointed and purposeful. I can’t stress enough how important the writing and dialogue delivery are in this game. Just a spectacular acting job all the way around. You can hear the agony and frustration of people who are trying to survive the best way they can in a changing world. The dialogue was so well done that you felt the agony of the situation for the characters on a personal and world level. I mean, watching a country tear itself apart while an oppressive government tries to control messages, people, and the direction of society is pretty impactful. This is good storytelling.
I love the story, enjoy the characters very much, and truly think that DON’T NOD put in some good time with putting together a world and characters for the gamer to connect with during their time with Harmony: The Fall of Reverie.
Structuring Your Gameplay
Now, how does that story work in conjunction with the gameplay? Well, it’s a bit more visual novel than most might be expecting. You essentially follow the story and characters, then come to a fork in the story’s road where the branching narrative choice occurs. You can see in Denisse’s video below, you start with Polly and proceed from there to a split in the road, where you can make a choice that has positive vibes attached to it or negative vibes. Depending on what you choose changes the storyline.
In my own playthrough session, someone very close to Polly, a girl named Nora, helps to seek out information that might lead to Polly’s mom, or at the very least showing the breadcrumbs to the next stop. In doing so, they track down a news reporter who is on the lam from MK, who is cold with her emotions about helping them. In this moment of coldness, the game wants to know whether you’re going to have Nora stand in the background and say nothing, since she was a huge fan of this news reporter or speak up. The game goes from animation to a pulled-out flowchart where it simply asks how you’re going to handle things. If you choose the quiet mousy route, you begin to lose the news reporter’s confidence. If you take Nora the aggressive, disappointed route, then it breaks the news reporter, and you get to see the very worried and human side of her. Of course, this decision means that you have created a new timeline of events that carry the consequence of choice to the next split. I love the potential chaos and complication this could create.
This type of gameplay must have a good story and great acting to hook the gamer, and it does have those. This is the main crux of the push and go with the gameplay. It works very well and compliments the visual novel to make you feel like you’re helping to create the story and make it personal to you. That’s nothing but gold when you’re trying to get a game going like this. You must give reasons for the gamer to care and invest their time in this type of structure and choice. The story does a great job of opening the door of interest for the gamer and making the branching choices meaningful, and most importantly thoughtful.
Because that type of structure works so well, and the complicated number of choices the gamer must make in the story, the game suddenly becomes replayable. As Denisse and I did during this review process, we went back and played this game from the start again to go down different roads of choice. If you have a good story and intriguing characters with engaging results from said choices, then it is a given that you’re going to go back and see what else the game can bring to the table in terms of story variety. And there are so many choices and roads to travel that you’re going to get a great big combination of different ways the story and characters can end up.
Anyway, the gameplay and story do a wonderful dance together that makes the journey worthwhile. I do understand and acknowledge that this game will not be for everyone. It’s a niche style of gameplay that will either catch you and engage you, or just simply make you feel like you’re watching a movie. I can’t imagine the latter, but I’m sure there are people out there that simply won’t be as hooked as others. If you love visual novels and interactive moments, then this is certainly for you.
And on that sweet note, let’s wrap this up.
Conclusion
Harmony: The Fall of Reverie from DON’T NOD plays like a proper branching narrative visual novel should play. The acting, writing, and general presentation are the icing on the cake to make this type of gameplay work very well. While it won’t be for everyone, it certainly is top tier for those who are looking for a good branching narrative journey.
