Critic's Score:
Metacritic: 78/100
Adios is a peculiar game. I appreciate having read some of its director/writer GB 'Doc' Burford's essays on gaming storytelling, in special his old -maybe not to date with his current thoughts- write-up There Is No Such Thing as a Cinematic Game , an issue which has been living on my mind for a while and somehow, Burford got some of the right words and wrote them, so for the time being I can rely on them. What's key, is his insistence that game's shouldn't imitate the film form, but it should be inspired by its function. Gaming has a form of its own, interactivity; movies have montage. Games place you in a moment of time, and movies manipulate -or as Tarkovsky said, 'sculptured'- time. Thus, if the games to were look at the function of the film form for inspiration, instead of emulation and the affect it produces, experiences could be enriched. He often quotes Marshall McLuhan's axiom "the medium is the message". That phrase could be used to describe perfectly Burford's intent with Adios.
You are a pig farmer, you also dispose of bodies killed by the mob. But that's it, that's as far you'll go. The game takes place over the course of a day, the Hitman that often delivers the chopped corpses, is actually your friend. Once informed of your decision, he will try to dissuade you; after all, there is no retiring of the life. But you won't cave in, he decides to spend the day with you aiding with the farm's chores, with the hope of changing your mind. Reminiscing, rediscovering, talking and just enjoying the mundane chores with him, with the knowledge, that indeed, at night, he'll kill you. A final stance with destiny, like Bowie's song Lazarus: "this way or no way".
Adios is not your common walking simulator with choices. In fact, the design's sole cause is to form some empathy and affect, to let you in inside the farmer's mind. There's only one end, and no choice could change that, you can't change the farmer's mind as much as the hitman. It can become tiresome, because, even if the dialogue is not exposition, in the first playthrough it can feel like a barrage of information, which doesn't mean anything particular to us. But that's the key, as I have been repeating the chapters, the game's puzzles started falling into place. One thing that bugged me out at first, were the infamous greyed out choices, and given there were no charisma stats in the game, why were they blocked? I wondered, what was all about, those greyed areas sent my first playthrough in an automatic mode. But, then, as I began repeating some of the chapters, I began to realize why were they blocked. This weren't blocked per se, this were the things the farmer wished he could say but won't. Like any of us. The choice, remains entirely affective even if it won't open a new branch/alternative in the narrative, but they do change the way you decide to interact with the narrative. What you wished you could say if you were there, inside the farmer's head. Interactiveness causing empathy, one of the strongest ways the game form can affect the player. "The medium is the message".
I don't know how effective it is, given that most gamers' reactions are frustrated -and it ain't exactly cheap, that could be its most potential criticism. I was too, I had to give it a chance to understand that this was no numb and play game. Adios in fact, might be one of the most radical ways to exemplify what a game and only a game can do. Without action, without cutscenes. Only the player's vision and interaction with its narrative. For that alone, I find it commendable.
Score:
85/100
