No RiME, No Reason

After PlayStation giving it away free, I’ve decided I’m going to do a series play through of the game RiME. There is one problem with that though – I don’t have a clue how it is pronounced. So far, I’m betting it’s Rhyme, and after using that pronunciation for about 5 puns on the stream, I’m really hoping so too. If it isn’t, I just look more foolish than usual

Potential faux pa aside, RiME is so far really fun. No reason is certainly applicable here, because I will tell you now I haven’t a damn clue what is going on. From what I’ve played so far, the game has it all: the graphics are gorgeous; the music is beautiful; I’ve seen at least 1 fox. If this were a standard review blog, I’d give this game a high score on some quirky personalised review system of mine and move on.

But that’s not why we’re here. Just in case though, it’s a Perfect 5/7.

The Story so far…

So what do you know of RiME, and the story? Nothing? Good, you’re all caught up then. Neither do I. There’s no preamble or explanation. We see a red scarf whipping about freely in a breeze (read as Horrific storm of death and destruction) and then Boom. We meet our protagonist. Think Legend of Zelda Wind Waker, if nintendo panicked about white washing and deciding to make Ethnic Link. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a criticism. LoZ;WW is still one of the best games, so I was excited as balls when the camera panned down to African American Link. Even the artwork is very Wind Waker esque – Very Cartoonish. This does prepare me for something to go horribly wrong though, because Wind Waker is the most child friendly appearing game in Legend of Zelda, and has the most brutal ending.

So picture the scene – Young boy, waking up on a beach, with seemingly no recollection of how he got there and where he is – Did his ship crash? Is he stranded? Did he ever make it to Kevin Spaceys party? Judging by the fact he is in the middle of nowhere and there are no neighbouring islands or signs of life, I would have to say yes to all those questions. There’s only one thing for it then – Let’s get exploring.

We make our way up the beach and we get a better idea of where we are. By better idea, I mean we see more of the island – I’m still as confused as anything in regards to where or even why. A giant tower dominates the island, with the only entrance seemingly impossible to use. Instead we get to running around, terrorising the local wildlife – the usual. We find some teeny tiny boar babies, and they are CUTE AF. There is a fruit tree nearby, and you can get the little piggies to follow you if you carry the fruit around. So adorable. Less adorable when you carry it to near the Momma boar, who is a dick it turns out and was never taught manners. She rams you so you drop the fruit and then just helps herself like a glutton.

Bitch.

However it isn’t all bad. It turns out she was guarding a little tiled area, with a statue on a raised dais. When you climb to the statue, that I forgot to mention is sending a beam of pure light and energy up into the sky, you do what everyone would surely do when faced with such a thing. The boy approaches the carving, and – He shouts at it. I’m not kidding. This rock is carved perfectly, and it looks like it’s shooting the beams you see in every alien film where they blow up the white house. So our boy here just shouts. Not even anything cool either! Just rocks up and “HA!”

Damn thing works too. The statue that was made of a sort of jade/Lapis Lazuli turns to white granite, and the beam is stopped. However some leaves appear, borne away by a magical breeze. Standard.
Continuing around the Island, there are also what appear to be wooden carvings, used as Kids toys. We find a fox on a small pedestal, and nearby a part of a broken plate. (So begins my descent into the obsessive hell of finding all plate pieces and wooden toys.)

We also find three more statues, and we get a glimpse of an all black figure with a hooded red cloak (think Red Riding Hood x Stannis Baratheons weird ghost shadow child.)

What these get us is another, smaller fox statue surrounded by jade statues that were previously marble. It seems that the beam of light was borne away by the magical breeze, and gives life/colour to these statues instead. So, being who he is, our boy founds out that if you shout at all four, the middle statue wakes up. There is now a fox sitting here. Quick note – If anyone knows of any magical statues that can generate a fox when screamed at, hit me up! There’s a small cinematic that reveals to us whoever designed this island really wan’t to save space and have foldaway furniture. A staircase and tower just grow from the ground, and unfold themselves like some automated Ikea purchase.

We follow the Fox, and the puzzles get more and more complex – we’ve still got no idea what the story is, but our hero is just taking the new and cool puzzles on the chin. They aren’t just things to shout at anymore, although granted, shouting at stuff is still a huge part of what we’re doing. No, these puzzles now start using your camera angle to line up different objects to look like a door, because then they become a door, or to look like a key and they become…you get the picture. This goes on for sometime, and we even get some orbs that release energy when screamed at. These aren’t enough though, and we then set off some sort of super orb. It is worth noting the dedication from this kid too – Not only does he have these statues that react and cause magical doorways to open when he shouts at them, he also uses and then leaves this other orb he finds, that just changes the time of day. He literally rolls a ball, and that spins the whole planet quicker or slower; and this kid is like yeah cool what’s next. He literally has to move the position of the sun, so he can use his own shadow as some sort of sundial key and it just isn’t phasing him. I have to hand it to him, my first theory was that maybe he was on this island because of his shouting issue. His immediate reaction to everything is to shout at it, and maybe his parents were just like “Look, Link. You’re 13 years old. Your father and I haven’t had good nights sleep or a moments peace since you developed vocal chords, so we’ve decided to abandon you on Puzzle Island.” But he seems pretty focused so I’m leaning less towards his origin story being like ADHD or something. Either way, potential heartbreaking sad origin story aside, our boy has shouted his way into the Tower.

The Tower of Power…Development

Yes folks that’s right. We’re in the tower, and not only that but our intrepid hero is about to realise he doesn’t have to shout at things to cause a reaction – it is worth nothing he goes full on Legend of Zelda first, and discovers he can smash pots by shouting at them. We’ve now made our way into a pitch black room, but there’s a new feature – The ground has flecks that glow when we are nearby, and there are statues that do the same. It looks like we reached the room where the creative minds behind this game thought “Wouldn’t it be great if we had a crossover between Disney’s Atlantis and The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess?” By now we’re all in the same mind set as this child; Let’s shout at things and see what happens to them! Can we blow these up like the pots? Will they turn into mystical fox Guardians? It turns out, we’ll never know. The days of taking aggression out by screaming at inanimate objects are behind our young protagonist, as instead, he softly sings to the statues. It seems that he’s realised that changing the volume and tones he uses can weaken the affect and thereby bring the statues glowing abilities to life, without overloading them and causing them to break!…or His throat hurts and he has decided to give it a break for a while. Whatever the case, most of this room is a straightforward run. We need to watch out for the dark growing abyss beneath our feet, and sing to some inanimate objects to give us light. Easy. Oh, and it turns out if you hit up one of the side rooms, there is some weird entity, that’s not the Jason Todd shadow demon from outside. This is more X-men’s Emma Frost shadow demon. That just..melts away? Riiiiight. Let’s go finish the dark room. We find our way through the shadows and into a large open room. It is in fact the middle of the tower, and we’re at the bottom of a huge spiral staircase. It’s a simple enough run from here, straight up the stairs. Of course, you can stop every few seconds as we have done to shout at the braziers. You can see the laws of thermodynamics at work here kids, because as we all know, you shout at an open flame it will leap and change colour! Science Yay!

Finally, we reach the top. A room full of sand, with a breeze blowing in from a huge open doorway. Let me use this as an opportunity to just say – I don’t like sand. It’s coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere.

With renewed excitement, we rush for the doorway. Where will it take us?

The Truth Hurts

You ever seen the pirates of the Caribbean movie, where they have to sail over the horizon to rescue Jack, and he’s in the white barren wasteland? Yeah, we’re suddenly there. The camera doesn’t let us rotate and look behind us, but I can’t imagine there is a reason for that. Instead, we focus on our tasteful vibrant red scarf – It’s blowing away! we chase it in a seemingly haphazard but actually scripted path to the only discernible feature of this desolate place – A wrecked ship. I tell you, we’re in PotC! We climb the ship, we lose the scarf but now we can look behind us. Remember how I said there might be a reason but dismissed it casually and we all just accepted that there was nothing behind us? I was super wrong. We’re greeted by an endless storm, clouds so black and thick I’m sure Jim Morrison was once here writing about Riders in them. There is no way this kid is surviving this unscathed.

And that’s where we find out our first clue of what is going on – we get the trophy for finishing this chapter – Which it turns out was called Denial. Now, I would love it if it turns out that it means the sand was a reference to Egypt, and it means denial as in a Jamaican man just saying the Nile, but something tells me the storm, waking up shipwrecked and all the weird things that follow actually mean that this kid is dead. M Night Shamma made a game it seems.

With that potentially tragic reveal, Chapter one ended for us. Let’s see what the next level of the tower holds!

-BrightStarFOX