Review | Fatale
Jarboe and Kris Force again take up sound design duties, with Gerry De Mol composing alongside them. All deliver with aplomb. Towards the end of the first section, the music swells and builds to alarming volumes, as you wait for the clock to tick down to the next stage. In chapter two, haunting whispers of Wilde’s play swing eerily from ear to ear, never quite sitting right with one another. The aesthetic value of Tale of Tales’ work is rarely in question, even though they continue to work with limited technology. The Unity engine clunks away beneath Fatale. It’s functional, but you never feel like it’s realising the art’s full potential.
Potential. That’s a word that’s been springing to mind a lot while deciding on an angle for this review. Samyn and Harvey are clever people, with a strong understanding of their own work and an irrefutably solid vision. But in Fatale, that seems to get lost somehow. For a game with the tag ‘Exploring Salome’, it never really gives you the opportunity to do that exploring, be it literally or metaphorically. Both of the game’s areas are tightly constricted, the second uncomfortably caged by invisible walls. And its themes are either easily identifiable from the source material, or too obtuse to be particularly meaningful.
On one level, it’s a straight retelling of the original tale, in which Salome demands the head of John the Baptist for her dancing, though much of the game takes place in the aftermath of this. But on another, it’s filled with symbolism that’s too often a little too abstract to say much at all. Fans will undoubtedly debate the story behind the iPod that Salome inexplicably wears on her waist, or how methodically extinguishing candles relates to an overwhelming darkness in some deeper sense. But others will struggle to take home anything other than the gameplay, which feels stilted and unnatural. At least The Path, despite all its barmy imagery, had a series of strong themes coursing through its Gothic veins.
There are even idiosyncratic design choices that frustrate despite their intention. There must be a reason why you can only view the epilogue scene once you’ve restarted the game on completion, but it’s never made apparent, so it becomes yet another of Fatale’s impenetrable walls.
//Breaking tradition
As such, Fatale ends up being interesting, rather than particularly special. It contains a couple of absolutely stunning moments, which I’ll not be foolish enough to spoil here. They’re times when the developers’ artistry and clear understanding of atmospheric detail cut through the mix. They’re snapshots that the rest of this otherworldly experience should have been looking to ape.
Interestingly, one of them takes place over the few seconds where Fatale feels more like a traditional game than anything Tale of Tales have ever come close to before. As a shady figure steps out of a door and trudges through the darkness, shades of a handful of other titles spring to mind – Thief, Penumbra, Silent Hill. And I can’t help but wonder how things would have panned out if Fatale gave into its urges and strayed even further towards a recognisable structure; if Tale of Tales could find a way of cohesively fusing their visionary direction with more welcoming mechanics. I really do hope they’ll try that some day.
Because for now, Fatale feels like it never quite heads far enough in either direction. As a game, it’s too restrictive and unfriendly to feel solid. As a work of art, it’s not insightful or penetrable enough to leave a lasting impression. Instead, there’s always the sense that Fatale is running on an abundance of clever but incomplete ideas, and technological foundations that are constantly struggling to realise them.
Half marks for the half-ideas, then, but I’d say it’s still worth a punt if you like the concept. It’s often oddly beautiful despite itself, and there’s plenty of worth in its challenging of traditional gameplay mechanics. At $7, it’s barely a risky investment, though there will be those who snarl at the idea of being charged for this sort of thing at all, especially given the extremely short length. There’s little reason to replay, either, aside from experiencing the heady atmosphere once more. Fatale is a creative diversion, but it’s unlikely to leave the lasting impression its predecessors did.
5/10
Fatale is available exclusively as a digital download for Windows PC and Mac OS from Tale of Tales’ website.
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Good review. I pretty much entirely agree with respect to the game but I can’t help but feel you’re giving Tale of Tales a bit too much credit. It seems to me that The Path was stylistically great and very interestingly presented but incredibly trite. Fatale struck me as stylistically great and very interestingly presented but, leaving aside the basic story, incredibly hollow. I suspect that Tale of Tales have a major flaw as artists, they’re pretty good at communicating in an interesting and evocative fashion but they don’t actually have anything interesting to say.
Perhaps I shouldn’t be such a cynical pessimist but the problem as I see it is if we don’t insist that artists prove to us that they have something interesting to say we end up far worse off in the long run. If we don’t discriminate against artists who fail to convey anything worthwhile then we’re also not suitably rewarding those artists who do have the amazing ability to both convey interesting things and do so in an interesting fashion by lauding them above artists who don’t have anything to say. If we travel down that road we get to the same situation the mainstream art world is in where the most successful artists are simply be those with the biggest egos to shovel their bullshit and you end up with worthless idiots like Tracy Emin receiving huge acclaim at the expense of genuinely good artists.
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