Dread Delusion

2024-06-19
Wearing its influences like Morrowind and FromSoft on its sleeve clear as day I was almost instantly enamored with Dread Delusion. From the classic start as a prisoner to the weird different factions you'll end up working with to the floaty melee combat, the open world full of goodies, and the stat-based movement that will see you fucking cruising across the map when you have maxed the Agility stat it's got it all for the old school Bethesda fan. But while the first 5 or so hours had me absolutely sucked into the world, by the end it had overstayed its welcome.

The first thing that hits you is the weird and novel worldbuilding and lore. Immediately there's talk of a ruined old world below full of monsters and a war humans waged where they killed gods the size of small mountains. Your first mission is given to you by a woman who is seemingly trapped in a floating iron maiden with arms that constantly oozes blood and occasionally opens to reveal a skinless abomination gurning at you. Glorious. The writing which is one of the games strengths is always weird, often unsettling, occasionally profound, and frequently surprisingly funny. It's sprinkled throughout with moments like holding a mans hand as he dies, talking to an amalgamation of souls occupying a dragon, or telepathically communicating with a pile of meat that has gained sentience and really, really doesn't want to be eaten. Throughout the game I found the lore and the writing to be the one constant. Even as I started to be worn down by the mechanics of the game I kept on trucking for another slice of that delicious weirdness Dread Delusion serves up.

The next thing your senses will be assailed with upon booting up the game is the presentation. As is vogue now it's delivered in blocky PS1-esque 3D. What sets it apart is one: the delightfully odd world of monsters and mushroom kingdoms (another nod to Morrowind), and two: the effects layered on top to make the whole world look as though it were pulsing and breathing. It appears like the actual geometry of models is perpetually randomly shifting ever so slightly. It's a wonderful effect and adds so much to the vibe of the game. Even the cutscenes are stylized, delivered in hand-drawn scenes backed by narration. One minor quibble is the music, which is fine but not particularly memorable compared to the rest of the game's presentation.

After that you have the gameplay. Mechanically it does some things really well. A big world with lots of locked doors begging to be opened and relinquish their treasures. There are usually multiple of these doors each with different skill checks offering differing paths to victory based on one's build a la Deus Ex. One of those skill checks is Lore which requires you to find interactable objects in the world--a skull here or a candle there--to open them which I found to be a very interesting wrinkle. And one of my favorites: a stat for movement speed so you can focus your build on zipping across the world like a crackhead. One of the rewards for treasure is a floating skull which represents Delusions, the experience of the game. I'm not sure I've seen another game where one of the rewards for exploration is a physical pick up that gives experience. It rules! Oh and quests are open ended affairs that give you general directions that require consulting your in-game journal instead of a following a big, patronizing, blinking arrow.

But after 5 or so hours it all kind of starts to fall apart. Those stat checks start to be trivialized because maxing out stats happens far too early if you're exhaustively searching and equipping the right stat boosting items. Once you gain enough strength and money rewards which were once exciting are now inconsequential. Much of the pay off for exploration goes away with it. Early on, the map feels more dense and interesting--whether that's because of the novelty or because they actually are denser I'm not sure--but later on it feels like you're spending a lot of time running around empty spaces. By the end of the game I had maxed everything and ignored combat, which had been entirely trivialized, as much as possible and even mostly ignored treasure chests because they didn't matter. That speed stat had a double benefit of allowing me to basically sprint through every area to just hurry the game along.

But listen, while it feels like the overall curve of the game causes it to lose steam in the second half, I think that first half is so delightful, so alien, so weird and original I can't help but still recommend it. Just make sure to max your Agility stat as soon as possible.