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 Hello, and welcome to Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. This is a tale of two brothers (technically sons of the same man), named Naiee and Naia (hereafter referred to as Little and Big Brother, respectively). Developed by Starbreeze Studios, of Payday 1 and Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay fame, this game marks a thematic departure from those games as it does not feature a gunman making tough choices. This is largely due to the influence of the game's Director, Swedish filmmaker and Fajr International Film Festival award winner Josef Fares. Brothers won a BAFTA in 2014 for innovation, and was also lauded at the 2014 Video Game Awards (stop laughing) for Best Xbox Game. I feel the praise is well deserved. Told without intelligible dialogue, the story follows the brothers through an improbably dangerous and magical journey to find a macguffin to cure their deathly ill father. While the story can often veer into the heavy-handed and maudlin, I was enchanted when I first played this in 2013. There are some truly beautiful moments in the game, and incidental details show that we aren't even scratching the surface of what this world has to offer. Starbreeze has managed to create a beautiful game that was able to quiet the cynic in me, and awakened a real sense of the marvelous. The main selling point of the game is that you control both brothers simultaneously - Big Brother is controlled with the left stick and trigger, and Little Brother is controlled with the right stick and trigger. This can prove challenging, as I will amply demonstrate throughout this LP. There are no puzzles that punish sluggish responses, and do-overs due to brain farts are merciful. That said, I feel that the mental gymnastics involved in managing two protagonists simultaneously help to deepen the bond we form with the characters - it'll be interesting to see if anyone who hasn't played the game actually identifies with the characters, or if that's a function of the mental investment necessary to even play the game. I'll be playing through the story, attempting to show off every delightful aside and Neat Thing (helpfully alluded to in the game's achievements). If you haven't experienced the game before, or wrote it off as the usual indie schlock, I can't blame you. It is clearly a game that makes you want to Feel Things. For those of you still reading, however, I hope you'll join me on this brotherly quest. Playlist       
Skippy Granola fucked around with this message at 23:01 on Apr 13, 2016 |
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Apr 4, 2016 02:19
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The whole game is just a haunted house only for wonder and magic, and I love it. At no point is any world building explicitly done, you're just given these tantalizing glimpses of this huge interesting world
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Apr 4, 2016 23:44
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I guess it's about time for a cave level, huh? Thankfully, the game gets all the dull tropes out of the way quickly. Nevertheless, the caves manage to tell a pretty bleak story all on their own, and they have probably the highest concentration of puzzles in the game. It's all about pulling levers and moving switches and shuffling around this baffling and complex machinery in order to escape. I like it a lot, from a gameplay perspective, even if the drab colour scheme leaves something to be desired.
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Apr 6, 2016 23:27
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I'm not a huge fan of this chapter, honestly. The oppressive, halloweentown atmosphere is such a departure from the fantastic areas we've visited so far. To go from pastoral valley town to meeting a dang giant, to exploring this ancient and improbably massive mechanical mine, and then to end up in the requisite SPOOKY FOREST feels like a cop-out. There are so many more themes to explore - I'd have even enjoyed another area with Mr. and Mrs. Giant as they never show up again in the entire game. Luckily, Chapter 3 is relatively brief and forgettable, which is instantly forgiven by the rest of the game.
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Apr 8, 2016 23:14
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Gee I sure did a crummy job cropping these chapter images. Oh well. Sorry about the frequency of the updates, but it's so dang easy to record I can't help myself. Yesterday's update was quite short, and I'm just too excited about Chapter 4 to sit around. In fact, I think I'll update this thread pretty rapidly because - and I don't mean to sound like I'm complaining, because I'm not - there doesn't seem to be much to discuss in the updates. I hope you folks are enjoying the videos though! This is the one that really stuck with me - we're out of the woods and the game really hits its stride. This mountainous level is the perfect microcosm of this game's artistic vision - from the pathos of the first couple of minutes, to the beautiful scenery of the next, to the innocent and freewheeling fun, the sense of peril, the unexplained and fantastic world. If you're still with me at this point, I trust you won't be disappointed by the rest of the game. There are some surprises yet! Fiendly posted:I recall someone, Slowbeef I think, raving about this game back when it was new. Whoever it was, they had really good taste because this game is something so far. I slept on it so I hadn't seen anything but a few screenshots until now, and it is already presenting one hell of a world. I even liked the darker aesthetic of the most recent chapter, although the dream sequence at the end was way too creepy to be in an otherwise light-hearted adventure like this. It also deserves a lot of credit for such a unique style of gameplay, which I can tell just from watching makes even mundane tasks pretty challenging. I found GiantMom more absurdly funny than anything, actually. They'd have gotten more mileage out of those creepy stump monsters than OH NO NAIA IS A BAD GUY SUDDENLY edit: Video is still uploading and processing! Sorry folks, give it a minute.
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Apr 9, 2016 22:58
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bewilderment posted:The next update is going to be super exciting in terms of visual design. When I played the game it definitely made me go "aaaaa what is this where am I?" You said it! While Chapter 4 is definitely the most emblematic of the game, Chapter 5 really takes it away in visual design. I love everything about it - the vague sense at unease at the things you're required to do in order to progress, the completely ruined timescale, and really there's just something about improbably huge creatures that makes you feel so small. My only regret is we didn't get to see these suckers in action.
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Apr 11, 2016 01:35
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Well, I'll say this part of the game is certainly pretty. A lot happens in Chapter 6, which gives the events a nice sense of progression. The tonal shift and environment change halfway through really keeps the momentum going. However, that same shift manages to make the level just not that memorable. It's certainly pretty, and there are some inspirational moments, but after the sweeping vistas of Chapter 4, and the somewhat vertiginous inversion of scale in Chapter 5, Chapter 6 doesn't have a leg to stand on. The theme is there and, like Journey, there's something so final and epic about climbing a mountain to reach your goal. This chapter exists because it must exist - in the fairytale of Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, we are climbing along with the rising action to our ultimate goal. In fact, the game's sense of altitude seems to mirror the hero's journey. We have our call to action, which propels us up the hills and into the cave, where we meet our first real threat. We descend through the cave to the graveyard, where Little Brother meets his lowest point - the manifestation of his guilt at his mother's death, how her hand is literally keeping us from helping Father, and his paranoia at being destroyed by his big brother. We then meet another man at HIS lowest point, but by putting aside our suspicions and fears we are able to help him find closure. From that point it is upward progress, the caves and graveyard all but forgotten as the world opens before us and we leave behind the mundane. I'm wanking a bit here, but I can't help but see the parallels. I've never been too concerned with spoilers in these brief stream of consciousness essays because I assume you'll either watch the video first, or you're fine with knowing what to look for. The big takeaway from this episode is that HOLY CRAP, ICE MONSTERS ARE AWESOME.
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Apr 12, 2016 02:55
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 With that, we're all done. Short and sweet. Beware spoilers below if you haven't yet seen the end of this game and are the sort to care about that kind of thing. The final chapters really ramp up the pathos. For what it's meant to be, I feel Chapter 7 is by far the weakest, in terms of gameplay and theme. A surprise boss fight (that, nevertheless, is heavy-handedly foreshadowed in the previous chapter), wailing tragedy, and sudden determination. The spider girl feels much like the Atlas boss fight in Bioshock- included at the last minute because the player has to do SOMETHING to earn the end credits. I feel that having Naia Brung Low By A Woman is a disingenuous choice that seems out of place with the overall theme of the game. Let's discuss that in a bit more depth. Brothers is a game of cooperation - Big Brother is self-assured, determined, and steadfast. Little Brother is wracked with a phobia, a bit of a goof-off, but undeniably brave. Throughout the entire game, Big Brother has guided the flow - his idle action is to point in the direction of progress. His strength is what activates the majority of the machines. Essentially, he picks up Little Brother and flings him at the solution. This is apparent in the way the controller is laid out - the left hand is always, almost reactively, the hand of movement and direction. It is the hand we use to push our avatar to where we can act. The right hand is the hand, then, of action. Naia guides, Naiee acts. To have a brutal, inescapable fight caused by Big Brother's hormones and that eventually leads to his undoing, takes Little Brother out of the equation. Yes, I suppose it ties back to his prescient dream (which in itself felt out of place - is Naiee really scared of being destroyed by his brother, or that he won't be able to live up to him?) I'm sure I would have done it differently - a co-op platforming segment ending in tragedy as Naia throws his little brother to safety, leaving Naiee to complete the quest and discover his brother's broken body, in peace after protecting his little brother. I'm not sure if that would be less contrived, honestly, but it would indeed be more thematically cohesive. On the other side of the coin, the epilogue is a fantastic example of character development through action. We're meaningfully faced with challenges that took two characters to surpass, and by using the older brother's action button, our sole remaining character can draw on a deep well of untapped potential. It's a beautiful and tactile metaphor for growing up, and I had to pause and absorb the message for a while when I first played this game. So, we're brought to the end of the game, short one brother but with a surfeit of self confidence. Good fantasy has a way of acting more as an appetizer than a main course - it fires up the imagination with all things that are possible, and tempts you to spin your own stories. This game did just that, leaving me to wonder where that little gryphon came from? If he roosts in the tree of life, how did the titan naturalist capture him? Who were the rest of the titans? Why did they fight? What happened to our friends the Giants? What's the backstory to their war with the trolls? For that matter, why is that guy with the stick way back in chapter 1 such an rear end in a top hat? Did he ever befriend that small dog? Not many storytellers can weave a tale by omission, but the world presented in Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons is one I'd dearly like to revisit. Thank you to everyone for watching, and I truly hope you've enjoyed this. And I dunno stay tuned for something weird
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Apr 13, 2016 23:58
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Never underestimate the power of sad diggin
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Apr 14, 2016 05:18
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This is America, sister - you gotta bootstrap your dead dad onto a table and then sic a small dog on a welfare parasite.
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Apr 18, 2016 22:42
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