Even the way a few scenes are blocked, the positions of characters are clues to their full story. They had to learn a new language, understand monoliths, interpret pictures and moments. Yet, I also feel like many of these people who understand and share the lore had to become scholars of the game to find the story hidden within. I find it very worthy of a game to have this much lore and story with no words. There’s a lot of people online who have dived deep into the lore and understood it far better than I understand even a normal game, and that’s great. However, at the end of the game, I felt like I had to go online to get the full story. No words and a purely visual game is great. It’s an impressive game for the limitations that it sets for itself. Though I feel that promising an amazing story is an overpromise for this game. I liked to see the attempt at a storytelling through it. In Hyper Light Drifter though, no character said a spoken line anywhere and in fact, much of the story is told through imagery shared by characters, and the imagery is rather good. I’m not against a story with no spoken words, I’m just claiming that it’s not necessarily an homage to the 16-bit era as claimed.
Final Fantasy III And Legend of Zelda: The Link to the Past both disprove this. This is claimed to be an homage to SNES games that couldn’t have any story in it while this is a bit untrue. Maybe I’ve played too many indie games, maybe I overthought it or maybe I want more, but that’s just me. The graphics on Hyper Light Drifter are impressive at times, the fact there’s no words or story means the game has to be carried by the visuals, and it does that well, but something about the look of the game tried to reach out to me and it didn’t connect at the deep level that it was trying to. Everything underground looked like a same-ish dungeon and everything above ground had the same feeling.ĭon’t get me wrong on this. The reason was, the entire area looks the same. There was a couple of points where I had to double back to find a door, or a location a second time, and the fact is I realized I had no clue where they were. The area looks nice when you first enter it but by the time you leave the area, you have seen the same motif so many times you’re glad to go somewhere else. A lot of the game had me wandering around the area that feels the same, and when you’re in the woods areas, you see a lot of trees, the sunken city area has a lot of water.
There are beautiful vistas and gorgeous moments in the game, but they’re mostly moments. The biggest thing is that a lot of the environments in the game aren’t that compelling. They didn’t reach me the same way they have other people. I am not doubting the 8-16 bit era influences on Hyper Light Drifter, but I also have trouble being excited for them. It also is around 300 times the file size as what the SNES would be allowed. The problem is Hyper Light Drifter appears to limit itself to a style from the 16-bit era and does so impressively, but at the same time, it’s easy to forget that it uses a more powerful machine and techniques that are far more advanced than anything the SNES could pull off. However if Picasso tied both of his hands behind his back and used the same style, while it would be an interesting feat, I don’t know if I’d be as impressed. If there was a guy with no hands who could paint a picture as good as a graduate of an Art School, we’d call that great. However I hesitate to call the graphics truly great because it’s the aesthetic choices that enhance the game, but those choices feel like limitations that the developer self-imposed. There’s a feeling of almost an 8-bit to 16 bit aesthetic to the world and as you play it, it’s clear a lot of thought and work has gone into the visual style. This game is rather impressive for the graphical style it’s chosen. I think the easiest place to begin with Hyper Light Drifter is the graphics. I actually might prefer beating Dark Souls Solo instead of tackling this challenge. So my task over the next couple of pages is to explain this strange game to you. The fact is, I feel all of these have a value in comparison, but none are correct. I call it Furi meets Zelda and then make the dreaded comparison to Dark Souls near the end. You can hear it in my First Look, I try to figure out what the game feels like. You know, I’m not sure what to make of Hyper Light Drifter. Also Available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Microsoft Windows, Linux, and macOS