Philip K. Dick - Second Variety
I became instrumental to the end of the world, possibly twice over. Huh.
Oops?
My playthrough of Shadowrun Returns a few months ago left an impression of a not terrible but mostly mediocre, option-deprived campaign brightened by a few maturely written lines of dialogue and half-decent combat mechanics making you really consider your action point expenditures and giving support roles their due. I ended up rather enjoying my elvish combination decker / rigger / spellcaster / amateur conjurer. For the Dragonfall campaign I told myself: "and now, for something completely different"
Well, I'm a dwarf now... which pre-existing genetic condition notwithstanding, I realized toward the end of the campaign that my stats had somehow, of their own accord, mysteriously approximated my previous incarnation to within one point each, maybe two. What can I say: I have my preferences. Still, leaving aside my own supporting role default setting, the rather limited gameplay does a pretty thorough job of pushing you in this direction via most skill checks being based on charisma / decking / rigging. Which, for a game advertising role-playing choice, is a problem.
It's especially a problem for a game based on Shadowrun. I've never been particularly crazy about the setting. As a kitchen sink of high fantasy, urban fantasy, cyberpunk (already a composite of film noir and SciFi) post-Apocalypse, pre-Apocalypse and the RPG rags-to-riches precept, Shadowrun (much like WH40K) just tries to do too much at once to hold much hope of outgrowing its "ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny" teen appeal. Even so, it's been growing on me, and for any cRPG campaign to do its many facets justice it would have to be a hundred-hour epic at the least. I would bet Dragonfall's sparse score of missions barely scratches the surface of its source material's potential, much like Neverwinter Nights' campaign did two decades ago with D&D 3.5, handing you a single sidekick and throwing you up against repetitive streams of undead and golems.
I slotted Dispel in my spellbook for several missions before realizing I was never going to find any enemy buffs / debuffs worth mentioning. I doubt I ever encountered a skill check for Quickness or Summoning (not even in the two demon-summoning themed dungeons) and Strength / Body checks are almost as absent (and the few that come up are also among the few checks where you're allowed to substitute a teammate (a.k.a. Eiger.) I don't think I ever picked up a SMG or melee weapon - but several pistols drop into your lap. You get almost no choice of NPC companions. Your variety of enemies is a bit lacking. On one hand Strength or Chi-based martial artists are mostly left by the wayside. On the other hand most enemies you meet seem to pack grenades with absurdly high throwing accuracy regardless of their other skills.
Level design did improve a bit over the original Shadowrun Returns campaign (though Settling Debts could be cited as object lesson in infuriating obtuseness) as did noncombat interactions, and at least the middle portion of your adventure offers some choice between missions' order. However, Dragonfall's most pronounced improvement came in writing. Though your NPC companions are limited in number, the main four's dialogues, as well as those of merchants, villains and flavor redshirts, are both greatly expanded and carefully tailored to flesh out your alternate-universe Berlin's bleak yet cautiously optimistic environment.
Somewhere along the way, Dragonfall turned into one of the most thoughtful takes on its subject matter you're likely to find among cRPGs, incorporating both a multifaceted view of human nature and speculation on how it would be altered by a universe ruled by dragon-headed multinational corporations. You get a brief glimpse at how escapism addiction looks in a world of perfect but short-lived immersion, how a Satanic cult leader might progress if he actually had the patronage to back up his claims, the true ramifications of blood magic or strong AI combined with a mind-machine interface, or anarchist movements in a world of literal mind control. The characters are interesting enough to make me forego my usual "no filthy hu-mons" rule of party membership for the sake of exploring their stories. The ideas are certainly not new (if you've read Neuromancer you'll see some plot devices coming a mile away) but they're presented with due sobriety and equanimity appropriate to a genre centering on player choice... however that choice should turn out.
At this point, since I'll be discussing the ending (I arguably got the worst one possible, and it's a doozy) those of you allergic to spoilers may want to avert thine eyes lest they offend you and require cyborg replacements. (And buy Dragonfall. It's not one of the masterpieces of the genre, but quite worth a playthrough.) For my own part, Shadowrun: Hong Kong is already purchased and shall be played... as something other than a back-row support caster for once.
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"I stand by my decisions, all of them"
That you're allowed to actually reply thus when confronted with evidence of your apocalyptic blunder would by itself set Dragonfall's writing above the vast majority of mass-market entertainment. In the final encounter, I chose to side with Vauclair the would-be dragon exterminator against my own team. The fight itself was very interesting. It would've been impossible without heavy pep-pill abuse, Glory's poor AI (built for melee but never closed the distance) Dietrich losing control of his summons and me having serendipitously slotted the Blind spell which completely neutralized Eiger the sniper.
Now, of course any reader the slightest bit genre savvy would easily predict that such hubris would have disastrous consequences. One does not attack a role-playing world's core concepts without some cringe-worthy cosmic backlash. Nevertheless it was the appropriate choice, in character, for my dwarfish self given the information at hand. The same is true of my choice to set APEX the sentient AI loose into the matrix. Never mind that anyone who remembers Wintermute will easily spot its cynical manipulation of you from the get-go, and that freeing an AI is one of the most insanely reckless acts imaginable. To keep a post-human intellect of such magnitude enslaved was a crime against sentience and my character, once again, acted accordingly.
The beauty of Dragonfall is that it does not try to sweep such actions under some blanket, trite, after-school-special moralism. It doesn't wag its finger at you, but merely presents you with tales of the world's populace being devoured by the Lovecraftian terrors you've inadvertently set loose, as-is, at the same time as you can declare you made the right choices given the information to which you had access. The "bad ending" lets you witness your remorseful ally Vauclair's suicide and share a fatalistic final drink with your former enemy, the sadistic, faux-nihilistic Audran, as both of you homicidal, genocidal, omnicidal monsters resolve to see your pet Apocalypse through to the bitter end:
Beautiful.
Again, it's been done before in other media, but you don't see more complacent video game developers daring to actually implement such an acknowledgement of personal choice.
There is no bad ending, so long as it's well written.
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