Playing We. The Revolution: Oui! la Répétition

[Music] perry [Music] we were enchanted by the idea of freedom yes the revolution sorry we the revolution is a game about the french revolution one of the best i've played as a matter of fact but then here's the other it's a curious blend of puzzle game historical drama and political thriller that attempts to cram three years of the revolution into a digestible two months it uses that time to explore themes like freedom fairness fraternity and fatherhood i'll tell you now it's going off the rails with all of those ideas and more the channel has been a bit low on euro jank lately so this is an offering from polish studio polyslash it's a game full of charming ideas delivered with wonky execution what more could you want from a game about such a time period our role is doling out what people see as justice in order to survive the turbulent politics of late 18th century puri we play a judge of the controversial revolutionary tribunal a court established to cull counter revolutionaries but also wound up trying a lot of mundane cases as well beheading people all the way when it came to justice you can do it fast or you can do it right and as per robbers pierre's wishes we do it right away terror is nothing but swift justice this may seem like a mix of acetone and papers please at first blush but as the french say in french and may not actually say the outfit doesn't make the monk this is a social survival horror game built on resource and reputation management where unforeseeable turns can steal hard-won trust out from under you this can make for an unfair time but it's the french revolution it requires an open-minded player able to trust the game to needle at them approach it like that and you may see what it's going for but sometimes even cutting it slack it will be frustrating without gain i've got two disclaimers before i pull the rope on this one this video will spoil the game it's got a lot of flaws but i like a lot of it and even love a little it has a good few surprises and i'd argue it's worth experiencing if this opening summary got your interest go play it first before watching the rest i will say however you are very likely to come back angry at me if i went back in time and told myself to play this game i'd be mad at me but i wouldn't say the time was wasted 2. this game is full of french names and i'm not going to get them right nor am i even going to try tomville will save us the actors have my back luckily being english in fairness i'll say english bad too it's not much but it's the best olive branch i can offer though i'm sure you'd prefer a white fluff this is what first greets us when opening the game you may think it on the nose but the nose is actually on the scale i do rather like this image it communicates a melancholy tone raises a lot of the game's questions and it's just nice to look at we've two modes to choose from the fictional survival mode and fictional fiction mode that's us oh outpost modern i do appreciate the unintentional suggestion that survival mode is in fact factual it's probably more accurate we the revolution takes a lot of liberties very much in the spirit of things to guess is what the other acts are called the game opens with paris in shambles father why did you disarm me i have your blood in my veins how could you some bloke putting aside his present problems for some parental ones we'll learn about him much later for now let's talk about the artwork originally polyslash intended to use pixel art until the team set out to find a look which better suited the subject matter they went through a number of looks before setting out to create a pastiche of classical and modern movements massaging qualities of each into something new before introducing their own touch with polygonal rendering giving the images very sharp defined features i rather like the end result a friend who knows a lot more about art and possesses far more technical skill than i do doesn't but sodom he only made the thumbnail for this video so what does he know follow hotcider on utwits it's only fitting that a game juggling so many ideas does the same with its presentation and i'd say it works well this game takes an eclectic approach in a lot of ways and that won't always turn out to be the best decision the art excels in character expression and sense of scale colors are often exaggerated or detailed subtracted to lend weight to scenes that need it like that image at the start tells us this is a game going for striking imagery and it worked well on me it's very theatrical and i often got swept up in it the game has a handful of subtle elements and it's good that the art isn't amongst them while it has its slow moments the promise of more art was often enough to keep me going and the thought of certain moments being rendered in pixels makes me happy they decided to do it differently this isn't a dig at pixel art every style has its place we the revolution has a large main cast adding people from the court cases and this is likely more than 50 unique portraits the painterly style allows for more expressive and varied character designs after the opening we join our protagonist alexi fidel and his mentor raymond devoyere as they drunkenly stumble into work raymond helpfully spells another major theme of the story for what it's worth he regrets doing that speaking of regret our family's here alexi's wife matilde and older son bernard aren't happy with him words getting around that we're a gambling drunkard so the neighborhood kid started bullying our young son frederick for having a cool dad he got in a fight and broke another kid's tooth defending our image i'm proud of the boy so he do as any loving parent would and hold a mock trial for him but first let's focus on me hierarchy screen that all alone i'll bet robert's pierre's hiding in here somewhere look out rob i'm coming for you actually wait i should hold my tongue he may hear my kid gave someone a crown the first several days are spent introducing us to core court mechanics and we'll tackle them as they come up and this will take a while but having done jury duty that's just how it is i'll give my verdict first and say that i do like the court gameplay despite a lot of rough edges on sale i'd argue it's worth the price of admission if for nothing else than the stories of the cases themselves there's some good little tales in here from tragedies to comedic farces and some of them are fascinatingly mundane it explores the setting well through these cases in this trial we're introduced to the case file and finding links this is the best gameplay on offer and even then the quality of play varies case to case and it has some blemishes that raise questions the idea is straightforward you read the case file and then find links by connecting subjects to context using the case files to clarify what goes where on its surface that may not seem like a puzzle at all just required reading but in the better crafted cases there's a finely tuned ambiguity that made finding these links feel like i was connecting the dots and deepening my understanding of the case i think it's natural everyone would start with the most obvious link and work downwards if something is marked as evidence that's a freebie as you find these links you eliminate possibilities from play and this does lead to a realization and that's that some cases feel like they wind up solving themselves when i noticed i was doing this i decided to test whether i could find links while skipping the file and found it was often more than doable it's undeniably satisfying watching everything fall into place with no effort but it does show how the links and actually understanding them are a bit detached from the case to discourage this the game has traps which require carefully reading the case file to steer clear of if a subject doesn't go anywhere or relate to anything it means whoever wrote the case file needs to have their pay docked and that you should probably ignore it granted unless you only have one permissible mistake then traps aren't much of a threat one solution could be to have the context not be eliminated keeping the puzzle somewhat complex and making sure each clue requires some thought from the player but there is another issue which makes that solution a lot less appealing the times when something outright marked as an accusation turned out to be something else now on reflection that's a clever trap in its own way and i fell for it by assuming it was a gimme but it does sit on top of a genuine problem that ambiguity has downsides despite these being based on context it seemingly tries to be vague in really graceless ways sometimes really stretching or inverting the seemingly established meanings of its own contexts sometimes subjects theoretically make sense for multiple contexts and they may well link to multiple answers or sometimes just one at times even when consulting the case file and reading it through again and again it feels less like i'm figuring things out and more like i'm gambling on what the author arbitrarily set down in one case rebuilding collapsed and killed several people is the subject crowded flat talking about the victims or is it talking about the course of events or is it somehow an extenuating circumstance bear in mind we're trying the architect well it's an extenuating circumstance if anything even with the case file this seems like an aggravating circumstance it isn't saying the crowded flat hastened the building's deterioration or paint blame on the landlord for letting it get like this it instead mentions how there are now orphaned children refusing to talk or eat that isn't giving the accused architect slack that's rubbing it in now english isn't the developer's first language but even if this was originally made by native english speakers and they were all brilliant wordsmiths there is an unsolvable problem with a word puzzle like this subjectivity these aren't logic puzzles even the same words can carry different meanings to different people depending on your experiences with that word a puzzle like this is less about the case and more about reading the developer's intent colored by the time period then by the characters and slowly by the growing sense that they're being purposefully obtuse anyway this puzzle isn't doomed to be a bad idea but there's a natural limit to how fair it could possibly be when i said in the better crafted cases was that because they were better written or were they just on my wavelength here's the thing for each link you make you get a question and you don't need to unlock every question to progress as a matter of fact you don't need any it does hurt your standing but you can limp onwards just walking into court handing out a verdict and buggering off home and funnily enough this may actually be more fair than the real revolutionary tribunal many of the mechanics take a similar approach and take it all together it's hard to tell if this unfairness is down to an earnest misstep or the design working as intended we the revolution is an easy game that's slanted against you in a lot of little ways that give it a perilous facade a sheep in wolf's clothing so while i complain about ambiguity here that may be part and parcel of what the game's going for whether or not that's an excuse depends on the individual and i can forgive it but i'm not going to pretend it wasn't more annoying than intense sadder to say the courtroom manages this balance of fairness and ambiguity the best since it actually feels in service of one of the game's themes maybe i'm just upset that i'm an idiot who failed some puzzles and at the end of the day i still get to send people to prison so i've got someone to take my frustration out on point is you don't even need to talk to the accused to pass judgment but as this is our son let's pretend to be fair what struck me after asking all the questions and getting the whole story that he picked a fight with a couple of boys they ganged up on him and he more or less broke one of their teeth by accident was how many details still felt uncertain this turned out to be a common occurrence despite everything i've said in the artwork and such this is a rather grounded game it's rare to get a big confession or a dramatic breakdown most often people are going to stick to their stories absolute guilt is basically impossible to establish and once people are out the courtroom you'll never truly know if you made the right call but for now i go with guilty it's best he learned now that the courts aren't messing around but since alexi isn't going to be the one to string the boy up the somewhat happy family heads home anyone i thought we outlawed that we were enchanted by the idea of freedom i know it's odd but this is where i'm going to give out another spoiler warning despite the blemishes mentioned the court cases make for some good little tales a lot of the link finding puzzles are fine so if we has your interest go now the next day we get our first proper case and the first of many jeans this one runs a tavern and has been indicted for watering down his drink now i know we're all thinking but the guillotine isn't installed yet so we're settling for jail luckily so is everybody else we're introduced to expected sentences and the jury from here on out our choices have consequences and all eyes are on us the game features two later free groups the common folk the revolutionaries and the aristocrats and the verdict we hand down affects our standing with each the people are fickle they'll love you one day and eat you alive the next and it's rare you'll please everyone we also have reputation which affects a little of everything have a good reputation the whole game's a little easier bad rep vice versa if you have a bad reputation you are likely being incompetent on purpose since putting in any amount of effort will have you hailed as an endless font of justice then we have the jury depending on the questions you ask they can be swayed towards either verdict going against their wishes can incur a penalty where you'll take a daily hit to your standings for a while some questions will have their effects obscured along with witnesses you can bring in who depending on how you question them can push the jury either way this adds some guesswork and risk to proceedings some cases can be pretty stacked one way or another but through asking the right questions you can play a difficult crowd and get the verdict you want the reason for my second spoiler warning is because i want to talk about the little arc i went along i was slow on the uptake and didn't realize what the game was doing for perhaps too long my own decision snuck up on me and i think it made for the best experience i could have had and hearing mine means you will definitely not have a similar experience the first time i played wii the revolution i approached it like i had ace attorney i thought my job was to find the truth of course mr renard here had committed a heinous act and deserves punishment but later on his opinions were split and morality was murkier i found myself in bad standing by asking all the questions i'd end up at odds with the jury the lack of definitive guilt only complicated the decisions i made the truth is elusive questions are dodged it's all he said she said there's rarely if ever a straightforward confession of guilt and what with the whole revolution going on there are opportunists everywhere exploiting the upheaval eventually i had to call a verdict i disagreed with to save my own life slowly but surely this happened more and more court days soon began not with checking the case file but checking how a verdict would affect me and working towards the outcome which was most beneficial i slowly stopped searching for the truth and started making it that was my real job the moment when i realized what i had been doing was great the game had wrapped me around its finger it clicked just how many people i had really imprisoned or killed not because i agreed but because it suited me and by then i was in too deep to really stop it was rare that i got to feel justice was done without personal cost occasionally i did go against the grain to do what i thought was right but then there were the times i had to behead a woman for feeding a homeless former noble or let a pedophile pimp escape that same much more deserved fate what made this work so well came from alexi himself in conversation he often acts as though he's just doing what he feels is right that he trusts in the law even though we know we're abusing it other characters and even alexi himself in his inner monologues tends to be a lot more skeptical me and alexi wound up going through much the same process me mechanically and him narratively the mechanics of this are simplistic and the outcome of verdicts is in no way hidden from the player but thanks to some shoddy preconceptions my morals wound up being eroded away this may sound like a negative if you take this as underhanded manipulation intended to force your hand before pretending the player is a monster and the game wouldn't have been half as impactful if i took this as an insult this is not a schlocky guilt trip where the only winning move is not to play it never felt like it was putting the onus of cruelty on me instead it brought me closer to the setting and to alexi we has a complicated relationship with its protagonist it's a little muddy by the end but to simplify it doesn't consider him evil but he's clearly a far cry from good he's a man who believes himself principled in a time where those principles would be untenable he's deluded enough to rationalize his actions but not naive enough to be blind to what he's really doing while he's aware his role in the revolution is incredibly dangerous he knows that trying to stop would definitely see him dead and that's a lot going on but it works the story isn't overbearing about it it just comes through naturally that is our new symbol of freedom you can still smell the fresh wood do you feel free looking at it the game further reinforces this connection our way of confirming decisions is having alexis sign off on them soon afterwards thanks to raymond being drunk we get to design the tribunal seal from then on all of alexi's decisions are joined by our own stamp of approval i think it's saying something like that anyway honestly i was just having too much fun with a stamp my second playthrough obviously couldn't replicate this journey and without it it was admittedly a lot more hollow and experience but that doesn't take away the fact that it fooled me once i'm playing the game and it did earn the right to play me back a little we the revolution starts by asking the question of whether justice can be done when those in charge of seeing justice done are just as much on trial before the story is even really kicked off it's yelled no about 10 times from atop the bastille and realizes the plot needs a few more questions to stew over one of those questions is do we go out for drinks at the end of the day who walks in but jacques lewis david apparently we promise to go gambling with him a judge keeps the punt as honest we're given a choice of going home or hitting the tables and i think we earned a break plus this is a real guy our family is fictitious so out we go and thanks to us we know the drink's good but we return home to a less than happy wife if we don't go she's pleased to see us but either way she comes around to some really contrived imagery how fred imagines us as a deep sea sailor rich with stories when we go out but all she sees is a man stranded on a lifeboat and while she will wait for us we're at risk of disappearing from all memory she says we have time to turn it around which leads to a tutorial on family mechanics the game says that in this mode we can decide how to spend time with them but because we went out drinking we can't and everyone likes us less for it so i've got a bigger hill to climb and so the tutorial dunks on me it's a bit odd the game sets this precedent in future there are times we can choose to go out gambling again and piss off the family but there's an actual reason to do so beyond just the fun of it it's rather straightforward everyone has their likes and dislikes one action will please one member of the family and piss off the others each family member is tied to a certain standing with fred boosting the opinion of the entire family the family also occasionally chips in on the expected verdict you can win some points with all of them by going along with what they want and i get the feeling they're either massive contrarians or trying to kill me because they always go against what the general population wants a good relationship gives a tiny bonus and a bad one does the opposite the love of a family will not make or break you i have a feeling this mechanic exists less to give the gameplay greater depth and more to keep the family in mind for the narrative so let's talk about them we are punching above our weight with mathilde she's seen by others as a perfect housewife taking care of not only the kids but alexi's elderly dad aldrich it's obvious that her relationship with alexi is rocky to start with there is some love left between them but matilda is tired of our vices and over the course of the game what little affection she has left is waning our position as a judge endangers all of them and she's well aware of it but doesn't really have the power to do anything herself our teenage son bernard is old enough to be filled with revolutionary zeal but still childish enough to not really understand the dangers of the situation alexia is worried his gullibility will get him to do something rash since he'll be tried as an adult don't worry we'll see his naivete destroyed in real time he also wants to be a musician which robs alexi the wrong way since he hoped he'd want to follow him into law frederick likes carving wooden figures and is still young and dumb enough to love us the game did successfully make me like the boy these pictures are really nice but it's concerning that fred may have seen the scoreboard i do wish the rest of the family had some equivalent presents in the courtroom perhaps letters or seeing them in the gallery it may be enough to make the more invested player think harder on a verdict and feel like their actions are under more scrutiny we do occasionally get our dad talking us up at the cafe and uh yeah dear old dad aldrich is a good man worn down he has instilled in alexi that the only things which matter in life are power and connections a former merchant who lost his business at the hands of the renard family no relation many years ago the renards were buying up all the market stalls when aldrich held out the renard sent some lads over to sort him out our brother bruno wound up getting provoked into a scrap which led to him getting sentenced and exiled from paris dad wound up losing the stall anyway and the renards are now incredibly powerful we know that our brother bruno has since died but for now we're not told much what's clear is the memory of bruno weighs heavily on both alexia and uldrick i like the family overall they bounce off of each other well and there's a good amount of depth to each relationship that gets explored as we go along the mechanics around them don't amount to much but it does act as a little mental braver and keeps the family in the player's mind before we get to the next major feature there are a few smaller things nothing major just the king stopping by the next day yeah none other than lewis capit the bourbon oh the crowd loves it the case was pretty fun too a conspiracy about a locksmith paid with a turgot map well i'm annoying myself for that gag who apparently sent the details of some wealthy clients we felt didn't properly pay him along to a master thief who got caught and shot oh there are some twists and turns here but i'm a bit miffed at lewis i thought it was an exciting case but he doesn't seem all that impressed he leaves without a word which sadly means alexi can get a few in king louis xvi there were people who truly loved him he reminded the french they had noble ancestors do not be manipulated by people who are not bearing the burden of responsibility this saddened me someone had advised him to say that someone who was well aware of the cold inevitable wind of change i did not pity the king but those who will come after him as they will not have great ancestors as i said earlier i love the cut scenes the art anyway the voice acting is more of a mixed bag i like the dialogue but i think the art is doing the heavy lifting and letting it get as lofty as it does it comes across stilted and desperate for some deeper meaning and most of that falls on alexi's shoulders one thought guides their clenched fists [Music] to bow before the new uncompromising idol with a shining steel crown i too have felt their eyes on me just like him [Applause] a silent assistant in this ritual of new faith a random acolyte scared doubtful will not the old gods seek vengeance for this treachery he abandoned them all too easily i think it was for the best the actors didn't try to affect french accents most of the actors know they're in a historical drama they're not hamming it up but there's a staginess to their delivery here's my favorite line way one brad alexey meanwhile seems to think he's in a museum piece his delivery is flat and oddly fast-paced he hardly displays emotion which hurts because he's often called on to a moat and in all but one instance it sounds completely unnatural and not in a good way this is particularly bad since a couple of cutscenes exist for no other reason than to give alexi something profound sounding to say the wrath of strangers made me sick to my stomach feet stirred dark puddles the air tasted like iron a kicked abused and physically wounded soul their heads what a cold and urgent order the beast's eyes showed a long disguised bitterness yesterday's envy these scenes are honestly so awkward but i'm willing to bet they turn people off of the writing if not the game itself completely while the word pretentious gets thrown around all too easily these days by insecure morons who worry they'll look like they're trying too hard for enjoying something unusual this doesn't come off in any way but pretentious to flip this around somewhat the next day alexi and raymond stopped by to have a look at their freshly installed guillotine and in this scene alexi sounds a bit more natural and expressive and yelling about louis and his entourage escaping paris so we will not be enjoying the aroma of freshwood for long perhaps rye quips just suit him but just like alexi is more skeptical in his internal narration is he meant to sound less assured when he's talking only to himself is his flat a delivery to make him seem more grounded than other characters ironically making one of the few wholly invented people seem more believable his character biography even notes that outside of court he is unremarkable and while he is still wooden in the trailers he does spruce up a little but brotherhood it is our one true success it is the bond that led you all to my table let us eat and drink to that brotherhood gentlemen while it's interesting to think about and there is more pointing to it as we get deeper into the story i still doubt the flat delivery is wholly intended alexis still attempts grandiose speeches and his life is the center of a bloody soap opera and well that's bloody with a couple of meanings he's often called on to pontificate and react to personal tragedy he just sounds out of place and he took me out of scenes a number of times it's a good thing that a lot of the heavier moments are delivered purely through visuals and music i may say this game isn't subtle because it absolutely is not but it has restraint this is a historical epic and the lead often sounds like he's falling asleep halfway through ben hur we've had a few minor choices during all of this we could spend influence points to confront the neighbors about our drinking i didn't figured i'd bank the points what are they going to say when i've got a guillotine and naturally they kept flapping gums influence points are a point of contention for me but they do a lot so i'll come back around to them later we could choose whether or not to join a march protesting the lynching of a mayor our decision changing how either faction sees us most majorly burrell commander in chief of the guard he comes along and asks if he has permission to shoot back at rioters he needs official backing for the guard to defend themselves i was a bit of a softie i went with a no and well this one had a small impact mostly on burrell seeing as he died at the hands of the mob to jump to my other playthrough i gave him the go-ahead he fired on civilians and this led to him being tried for murder the story of who started the brawl the citizens or the guard is much like the result rather messy i do acquit him mostly to see if he sticks around in the story and he doesn't either way the game retires him many of the choices are morton's forks i'm gonna withhold my opinion on that for a while we've still got more mechanics to cover but like the family bear what i've just said in mind so from one death penalty to the next the guillotine opens up people and our options we can now carry out executions relegating prison sentences to a middle ground option i've got more to say on the guillotine but first we have two hard cases one concerns a cocky merchant accused of price speculation who is really pushing his luck acting like such a on the day we installed the national razor the other hard case is prosecutor tinville who has come to court to keep an eye on us fitting that on today of all days we also get a pain in the neck this is a real guy and he got 2 500 people sent to the guillotine this guy was a pro secure i'm not gonna lie i thought he was a character of a man blinded by revolutionary zeal but he might actually be toned down seeing as i call the shots this might be a very fair showing of him he also brings our last meaningful addition to the courtroom the report a set of questions we need to answer accurately or else incur another penalty it serves a couple of purposes to check that you understand the literal events of the case if you're pushing for a certain verdict answers to the report may lie in questions that harm the truth you want it asks you to strategize a little you could try and make a stab at an answer based on what seems reasonable or ask questions which may hurt you for a definitive answer you even have to guess which question is likely to lead to the answers you might be after it's a great little addition that rounds out the courtroom it's also a reason to waste the wife's cooking we can go gambling with tinville to win favors allowing us to file a bad report at no cost all in all the courtroom may sound like a lot to keep in mind i had one friend fall off the game as the system started to seem like overkill i agree there seems to be a lot to keep in mind but the courtroom only really moves at your pace the systems are all isolated enough that you can tackle everything as it comes up and it wasn't long before i had developed a little workflow getting better at cross-referencing details and forming little strategies you make order from chaos whether that order has any truth to it well who's to say executions also introduce us to the speech mechanic and sadly i have nothing good to say about it before you make a speech you're given a strategy screen you can see each topic the listeners attitudes to each topic and a set of approaches to choose and some attitudes will be obscured so how do you respond to someone feeling attached is it with carelessness humility aggression or manipulation i'm sure each of you just had a different answer but so hang on let's go and check the winner is manipulation on these totally fair scientific social media polls you got the right answer good going i mean i suppose people on youtube would respond to attachment with manipulation remember to like favorite and subscribe and while we're here just kidding you were only right half the time there's two possible correct answers it could be and uh sorry to the people who the pole worried and to those who picked carelessness or humility watch out there are wolves about so it's an almost arbitrary memorization puzzle and if you don't pony up influence points you're going to have to take a couple of shots in the dark after you enter all of your guesses you do see how the crowd will respond allowing for some course correction it's not quite a monty hall problem but it's similar i dislike this mechanic and i'll confess that nearing the end of the game i just busted out a guide i feel a bit guilty for doing so but these mechanics are just a step too opaque part of why i do feel that guilt is there's never much at stake anyway make a good speech and you gain some points make a bad speech and lose them reputation is basically on tap if you're making any effort at all in court so much like the family the speeches are just here to top you off i'm salty but it's not like i have to drink the sea which is a saying meaning that it's not that hard the relationship between attitudes and approaches probably only makes total sense to whoever was put in charge of the system and the fact the player starts totally in the dark leads me to believe that we're meant to start clumsy and over the course of a playthrough gradually become more manipulative as we learn what affects what making alexi in turn seem like he's gradually becoming more dangerous the issue is that unlike the court system where we get to act on diegetic information this is just slowly uncovering the actual links between essentially meaningless prompts in aid of that end the gains and repercussions of speeches are kept minimal this mechanic is just for a few more points which is really bizarre to me anyway the accused is probably getting bored so let's move him along this guy loves it what a wonderful sea of faces let's talk about the guillotine a moment its inception is a funny thing its first showing didn't go quite so well the crowd found it too clean and efficient they wanted their gallows back this crowd's thinking the guillotine is all drop stop and heads roll cause this shit's fire but in reality it took time for people to warm to it besides they couldn't get their showier kills back the country had recently banned all methods of execution besides beheading to make the death penalty egalitarian but some bloke called samson a fourth generation executioner which is a hell of a family trade had to point out that beheadings are impractical you need a skilled hand the swords often break and the paris headman only has two so a bloke called guillotine proposed a machine to do the job cleanly and consistently the aim was to make sure that everyone got the same experience it was prototyped by antoine lewis and tobias schmidt and called a louis set i prefer this name since it allowed louis to set heads aside but well the name went to the ideas guy all this aside i do appreciate that the first man to die to what became known as the national razor was named nick the heading machines had already existed the guillotine just improved on them by having a sloped blade and dropping from a greater height which led to more reliable cuts it still needed to be taken down and rebuilt between people and it took calibration luckily for alexi he's killing less than one person per day on average still tallying my end of game kill count i think i was just a smidgen less lethal on average than the actual revolutionary tribunal and my reputation was tip top well well well look who the jacobins dragged in mate if you didn't enjoy the last trial you're gonna hate this one if you're wondering why he's battered uh that's my bad i didn't want to say no to the guards after the whole burrell business we can tidy him up but well this is a mess fit for a king let's talk about historicity for a moment i'm not going to actually knock the game for inaccuracy because accuracy wasn't really the point besides i'd be beyond out of my depth if i tried to do so the game moves the revolution around for the purposes of the story it's going for but for the sake of fun let's go over a few things for starters king lou wasn't tried at a revolutionary tribunal it wasn't even active while that was going on in late 1792 that mayor we could have gone marching for that was a real lynching that took place on march 3 1792. four months before the provisional revolutionary tribunal was even formed in response to the storming of the tolerance this provisional tribunal was then closed as lou's trial began lou's trial was done by the convention he was sentenced to death and executed in january 1793. we can call on postmaster de reye as a witness the flight to veren lou attempted earlier this week was a complete cock-up it required multiple stop-offs for repairs and so on that and it actually happened in 1791 a whole year before the lynching that happened the other day but for the purposes of the story they've been flipped around and set days apart anyway during one of the king's stop-offs deray checked the king's falsified documents which didn't really help since well he recognized the king deray here is more or less the reason lou and his entourage were caught and arrested deray was offered a pretty big cash reward but turned it down and would later join the convention falling in heavily with one of its most violent factions yet this is a real guy and funnily enough he was really at king lou's trial his real name was drought which adds a wonderful irony to him uncovering the king he's actually won the few historical figures in this game who made it out of the revolution intact most everyone we meet has a guillotine in their actual future when the revolution turned on the likes of robbies pierre tinville and other deputies who caused the reign of terror this dude was just chilling being a prisoner of war for three years this makes him the second jon we've met who was lucky to be in jail and funniest thing of all what with the restoration of the monarchy in 1814 he died under a false name the revolutionary tribunal didn't actually start until march 1793 a couple of months after lewis's death which is when tinville came into the picture they did get to try and marry antoinette so they did get their own crack at the ancient regime i didn't say that right who cares it was fun to dip my toes in and realise just how bloody chaotic and bloody chaotic the whole thing was there is some order created in we the revolution but the chaos is still very much intact i got to learn just how little i know if i've gotten anything wrong here and i probably have please correct me and if you don't mind throwing me some of the other tales of the french revolution i'd love to read them i should also say i did all of my research after i finished the game because what you think i'm going to look up spoilers despite being a simplification and shuffling the timeline a lot this is still a game that will reference jacobins garondins muscadines sancholots the lore of 22 several real publications of the time the contemporary view of religion women's rights an absolute ton of minor historical figures and much more seeing as alexi is a man at the time and pretty in the know people aren't explaining these things to him you can get by just understanding the mechanics and a lot is easily gleaned from context the game may be railroaded but it had already taken the revolution a little off the rails to begin with when i first played i was able to imprison low you take a massive hit for doing so and history doesn't change much he's dropped in jail and forgotten about forever tragic considering the restoration's only 22 years away meanwhile trying to acquit the get will get me and so sorry lou we're not rewriting this bit of history today roy let's got the light oh thank the supreme being it's just you where'd all these papers come from we're warned the crowd outside are getting restless they want swift justice so it's up to us to placate them there is one new mechanic introduced in this trial asking questions now passes time before people outside get upset resulting in yet another temporary penalty in theory this should mean we have to ration what we can ask but this mechanic is the one most obviously impacted by reputation if you have high reputation which you would have to be self-sabotaging not to the crowd outside may as well not exist as there is just not a trial long enough for them to pose a threat this time it's scripted and well the crowd is pleased to know i was about to take a little off the top anyway but they've got even more evidence against him oh boiler it's not looking good we've heard of consecutive life sentences but i'm about to try for the world's first consecutive death sentence so a lot of conspiring with foreign rulers plots against the national assembly orders to shoot rebels and by now even fred's getting ready to turn lou's head into a football yeah i won't argue in most games killing the king is a bit of a capstone something you save for near the end the first time i was playing i figured i had to be near the end of act one but i could hear one thing perfectly [Applause] bring us the king i'm not i'm only a third of the way through the first act that's part of the fun of the french revolution killing the king that's just the start we're on day seven if i in real life am killing a king seven days from now i've had a busy week and the videos are going on hold for a while with my upload schedule you probably won't notice that evening we're joined by raymond he's jealous and more than a little suspicious that roberts pierre picked us to judge louie's trial yeah he's weird for a number of reasons right perhaps as an act of petty revenge he gives us the tergio map from an earlier case unlocking yet another mode of gameplay a weird strategy minigame where we fight a culture war for parts of paris plus fidel as reward for his part in destroying the old rule has been given the honour of supervising the construction of a statue outside his house sections of paris can be controlled to either grant us influence points or boost the speed of the construction taking penalties if we don't hit milestones in good time at those milestones we can take over a building in our district each of these allow us to spend influence points to more or less ignore gameplay mechanics for a day or two and if you can afford these abilities you don't need them we have free agents who can each take over districts but differ in small ways the diplomat david can lower further in sections fervor is increased by having a poor relation with the faction populating the district the bruiser clovis is best at fighting off enemy agents which will eventually swarm the map and can quell the riots that should happen if they slip past david the rogue remel who we'll learn about soon is a middle ground in combat and can lure enemy agents to a section there are also revolutionary patrols who will target both you and enemy agents and go about inciting riots if one of your agents is caught you have to go and negotiate their release to put them back in play which means even more persuasion of an evening now this isn't terribly complicated but it is obtuse and poorly explained layer on the slow animations that start each turn faffing about with the statue and unlocking buildings moving agents around and occasionally needing to negotiate their release this is now a few minutes of every in-game day and it's a bloated system considering that besides not being very interesting by itself all it serves to do is offer costly methods to ignore the better parts of the game and more of the currency needed to do so unlike the family or speeches it also lacks in any relevance to the plot but it does pretend otherwise the first time we kill an enemy agent we're told by clovis that they are working for a mysterious r robospear maybe if he's allying with aristocrats we must tell someone everyone it could be ministered alone as long as we are not sure we would only create panic and as we take down more agents it slowly reveals that it's none other than renard as far as i'm aware this discovery has no bearing on the actual story there's no special court case for figuring him out or anything along those lines because spoilers renard is entering the main plot later anyway i've mentioned influence points time and again but let's briefly touch on them they serve two functions the player can either use them to bypass gameplay or to engage with events for the struggling player they're a lifeline and for the fastidious they're a bonus they're refreshed each day and certain modifiers can affect your stock they pose a simple question do you spend them to get around systems you find tricky or dull or hold on to them so that when events roll around you can get the best outcome which is usually some faction standing and a return of the points invested with interest i take it that you're meant to be liberal with the things but i can't be totally sure at best they'll lead to unique cases which is a good incentive it adds to the replayability and gives some actual weight to the points and sometimes if you ignore events they'll swing right back around and hurt you possibly just taking those points you are trying to hold on to anyway events can happen in court and in the evening so you can never be certain when one will really be sprung on you especially because even the day they'll pop up is random here's the rub there's an event chain i didn't get to really see out in both of my playthroughs a prestigious fencer wants to set up a private school but he's being obstructed by greedy officials a clever judge may do well to help him and gain a powerful ally first time around i lacked the influence to back him and had to ignore his request this gets taken as an insult and he goes and finds somebody else which led to a lot of backstabbing and murder what's funny is i had the influence points to end this one in my favor as an enemy of the school it winds up with alexi looking like this to the press so i can't say this wasn't its own reward come next playthrough i wanted to actually help his fencing school and see what came of it it sounded like a great time i love backstabbing and murder so put me right in the middle of it so i played more carefully held onto points and i kept myself relatively well off but a series of random events and global modifiers tanked my influence points anyway even if the event had arrived i would have been locked out of it once again i think it's fair to say that this is infuriating i have no idea of me being so annoyed at the game is what it wants but if it is it's succeeding with flying tri colours gate in content is a tricky prospect behind a test of skill or foresight perhaps but an unwieldy combination of luck and foresight that's the stretch we're now three hours in the game plays almost at full blow and the actual story is about to begin kicking off an enjoyable political thriller and the gameplay rob lovett it will try and get off its fat ass and keep up after one last slice of cake the next few days bring two new faces well three saint xu called us a corrupt relic of the enshone regime and well for one i killed the king yesterday and for two alexi isn't that old still there goes some points at court we're going through lou's close associates i change history a bit by imprisoning mary antoinette tyndall wasn't pleased but i don't know i don't think she was molesting her kid that was just someone being an exaggerator one evening a bloke called henry o stops by he's jockeying for our support to become the new commander-in-chief of the guard he throws a bunch of honeyed words our way and alexi is more tired than anything by his barrage of empty flattery however our wife really really likes the guy and has said there's no way we wouldn't support such a fine specimen in fact this is the happiest we've seen her so far what's going on here why does this feel like a feyer complete alexi yells ah come on mate don't get all french on us we're also visited at court by jean-marie roland we apparently trampled all over his name during lou's trial and people are now gunning for him the thing is i didn't mention him it's optional when push is for acquittal so this may set a record for the flimsiest opening to a plot i actually like i do adore alexi's casual dismissal of the guy ah you tried to play the game and it didn't work happens so he assures us that if he's headed for the guillotine we'll be right behind him that night hanrio sends a letter telling us roland has doubt on him as well and is likely already weaving an intrigue against us so we'll need to beat him to the punch this at long last unlocks the second to last gameplay system because it turns out this is really just a historical activity center we have to get a certain number of points for a plot to succeed much like anything else there's not much difficulty until very late in the game and even then i'd say we have to try to fail getting two points is basically an inevitability with the way the system works the actual carrying out of the intrigues has three sides to it the first is by doing yet more persuasion this is where it can become clear how scared of failure the game is the requirement to sway opponents is incredibly low as though reality is just bending for alexis we meet someone close to roland who can confirm he destroyed the documents detailing his connection to the former king while this one is simple a great many persuasions related to intrigues are treated as interactive cutscenes which does at least improve the presentation and make them feel more distinct and noteworthy sometimes we'll need to choose two or three people to try and convince this doesn't alter the story but each person is tied to a different faction so again it's a little top up the most common interaction is reading an event and picking an approach between diplomacy force and espionage depending on which the game is deemed most reasonable you'll be given a percentile chance of success for now it's spreading rumors about roland the distance potential allies from the man that sounds like a diplomatic job so we send david out i more or less walked through these there is very little difficulty and very little threat lastly is making choices and that's just making choices sometimes the enemy will counter-attack oh do i like a game with parry i mean parries but this is just a guzzied up event apparently henrio abuses his family man what is our wife seeing this guy we come to learn that roland's wife is the real string puller her political salon is actually a rather exclusive brothel and one she uses to arm her husband with rumor and blackmail so let's let henrio go topple the joint now this has taken a few days and we still have our day job and on the way home from work the day after we ransacked miss roland's establishment alexi is confronted by goons [Music] you why are you making me suffer [Music] sleep [Music] i'm by your side i do not want to sleep not yet [Music] i remember now ah that's why our wife said it either way we're saved by grace elliot and gregory ramel it turns out this stabbing is not so cut and dry matt brothel we exposed had powerful people profiting from it including the mayor of paris john nicholas pash and the archbishop gobel alexi says he doesn't want to go to war with every influential figure in paris but by being put in charge of lou's trial he has more or less been thrust into the spotlight and by upsetting roland we've now attracted the ire of his business partners if we're to take down roland and defend ourselves we have to maneuver him into the one asset we have the courtroom the intrigues are mechanically detached but for whatever reason i was loving the machinations of it it's poor gameplay coasting on a story that manages to be fun enough anyway ramel seems to know a lot about the political situation and strangers still a lot about us it turns out he knew our brother bruno out on the front and we were all he'd ever talk about anyway how's the family feeling about me getting stabbed no like my insides a bit mixed alexi denies to them that he wields any real power and matild bites back that well we'd better get some before we're all killed the next sodding day it turns out this roland business was all a bit of a cock-up this was the death rose of a group of gerondin sent into a panic by their relationship to roland and his relationship to the king so a bunch of them are getting arrested all at once and robers pierre lets us choose which roland to arrest jean-marie roland or his wife jean-marie roland okay funny thing is at this point i realized this had to be a real person this is what tipped me off there is no way the game gave him and his wife the same name the answer amusingly is they flipped her name around she's actually marie jean roland and i went with her she seemed more dangerous what with the assumed name and all before rolan's trial raymond gives us some mentally advice he tells us what happened to bruno when the renards came to take dad's stall bruno in his fury mutilated one of them raymond was to judge the case and the damage bruno had done all but assured the death penalty but aldrich came begging for his son's life with tears in his eyes raymond fought on it and wound up burning the case files he settled it out of court aldrich was to banish bruno from the city turn his stall over to the renards and compensate the family of the wounded boy he says the lesson here is that he showed mercy and while bruno would later die anyway the act of showing mercy was not worthless again whatever verdict you go with in the trial it doesn't matter both rowlands will leave paris we're just picking the direction by now their reputation is so thoroughly ruined they have to scarper anyway though i do love timville's response if you let one of them off the hook i enjoy messing with him in general i think raymond's lesson has a few takeaways the most surface level is just that being merciful is a virtue in and of itself it may be a nod to the nature of the choices we're making it also demonstrates at least some naivety on rey's part from a character perspective raymond is an odd one i get that he's an old hand and likely spent much of his life as a judge under far less scrutiny but it feels like he's somehow unaware of or unaffected by how at the mercy of public opinion we are least of all because with this date i was in showing mercy would have been an instant game over so that's the first intrigue and it was alright but it's got to be said we the revolution might be one of the most tiring games i've played it's weird and over ambitious and we're just over halfway through act one the day now goes court family strategy and intrigue throw in potential executions arrested agents and story segments in a bit of the intrigue and you could have maybe five or six speeches per day and that's not even mentioning cutscenes and random events every court case is a short story to learn understand and evaluate before being thrust back into the complex political thriller that is the actual ongoing story the courtroom the most complex interesting and feature-complete portion of the game can now wind up taking less than half of an in-game day and it isn't the means by which the plot is advanced which just seems bizarre to me i said most of the cases are good and they are but i think there's a bit of a slump in actual depth around this point it may be that the cases got simpler it may be that i got used to the mechanics and had my workflow or it may just be that the story mentally overshadows it near the start coming home to the family seemed like a relatively simple choice so you can take a mental breather now it's an intermission the french apparently say the knight brings advice we the revolution says it brings mini games this isn't helped by robert pierre passing the law of 22 meaning some days we don't even have a case just some mini cases on the one hand yeah that lets me take a mental breather on the other hand that's the best bit of the game excused for the day it feels like the trials were bait on the hook i've been tricked into everything else this does also remove our ability to imprison leaving us only with the acquit or kill options while this removes mechanical complexity it does make the game more difficult and yeah that's part of the history the only time the court is relevant from here on is when we drag the target of our intrigue in here by which time it's not even really a climax they're worn down and most of france will have already turned on them and their cases aren't much more complex than others seeing as we're the one who uncovered or invented it the constant shifts in gameplay mean i have to mentally swap out rules every few minutes and this isn't helped by the fact that half of these bits of gameplay feel tacked on while i love the way the game uses text boxes they're being spread all over the screen giving the courtroom an unruly and antagonistic atmosphere with the use of spiked boxes for literal barbed comments it's fun but it's quite wearing on the eyes and this is on top of an already incredibly text heavy ui it can also be hard to pass what's important and what isn't as story beats go some of the best character moments and biggest reveals are delivered just sat at the dinner table while important events such as alexi seeing a dog gets an entire run at marvel taken all together it's no wonder alexi looks absolutely shattered at the dinner table i had to play this game in short bursts and take breaks from it quite often it's so information dense and mechanically bloated that by this point i had no clue whether i even liked it or not i just felt i had to keep going it starts off fine the mechanics are better at communicating the story than being an engaging rule set by themselves which i personally am fine with i was willing to put up with some low blows because i felt the story was delivering on its end of the bargain being interesting and keeping these mechanics in context then more game gets piled on more and more superfluous game and eventually it's just weighing the story down the part of the product that's actually working fortunately the next arc woke me up a little it's my favorite an absolute roller coaster which is where i came to learn alexi actually had much for character to speak of ramel comes to us having uncovered that posh was the one who ordered our hit seeing as posh has an ally in danton a head-on attack is off the cards we prefer to go for a heads off approach i just opened the game to get some footage for a still background shot but i need it from a mini case part i need it from like a speed trial bit and uh it's deleted all my saves that's unfortunate in reality posh was a garand in while danton was a jackabin this doesn't mean they couldn't have secretly been in cahoots in fact the garandans disliked parsh for his political incompetence so hey maybe what follows is alexi's terrifying cornering of his attempted killer first he arranges a meat during which he feigns ignorance over posh's role in the attempt on his life he demands that as mayor he aid him in finding the culprits and promises to cut him in on this new gambling den he's operating and gain a friend in the tribunal posh can't believe his luck and doesn't quite question that the gambling den is that brothel we took from roland now being operated by henry o yeah i handed it over to him figured it would give him something to do besides my wife while alexia and the mayor are becoming fast friends we also uncover that push's daughter marie is in a relationship with another woman and alexi plans to use that against him much to david's discomfort i've heard that someone's been trying to kill you and now you've been promoted to the elite group of murderers the princes of the guillotine congratulations i never asked to be admitted to the club but i did not get there accidentally either yes which is only fair because alexi kidnaps marie's lover beatrice and forces her into signing a confession that she and pasha austrian spies threatening to expose their relationship as leverage alexi points out that she's doomed either way but if she signs this confession he'll give her time to run this allows us to not only sever danton's alliance with posh but turn him to our side danton reveals what the two are plotting they were obstructing robbers pierre's construction of a bridge that was actually finished a couple of years ago in an effort to make robbers pierre look ineffectual posh has his communications with danton locked up in a safe all we need to do is get our hands on them and alexi has an idea the two have pasha rested alexi rushes to the jail demanding to know what's going on if anyone deserves to be decapitated it is danton for his pretending to be your friend forget about royalty and let me die i deserve this punishment and now believing alexi is a friend and regretful of what he's done posh gives him all the rope he needs to behead him with the plan almost goes awry when beatrice escapes our grasp but instead of fleeing paris she instead tries to blackmail marie alexi rushes off with guards in total where they're meant to meet are you going to kill me now what does your heart tell you monsieur lejouge come marie it will be like it never happened i promise perfect intrigue we're not quite done but yeah i was loving this it was a sucker punch but it didn't feel out of nowhere by now alexi is bathed in blood and the dips he went to to get poshwood dark we had some fun twists and turns here but now the only thing left to be twisted is the knife with minutes before his trial posh realizes what alexia done we got him right where we wanted him took all of his power and he has no allies to turn to but then at the trial posh does something interesting he plays it cool he admits to treason and just as he's about to try and drag everyone else down with him we're called away frederick [Music] my son okay that's a counter attack what follows is a great moment alexi comes back screaming at posh who denies all responsibility his plans gone out the window all of his bravado is gone the jury's verdict swings hard into execution barring an extreme surplus of opinion and mercy beyond mercy both you and alexi only have one choice [Applause] thanks tinville needed to pick me up at home they're happy i killed the guy but the dead sun's a drag the family is shattered bernard is off crying somewhere matild screams at us for gambling with their lives and aldrich's trying to hold things together but she's not having it the worst part is we still have more enemies out there jesus christ game so alexi takes a day off just the one and at the table bernard and matild confront alexi over tomorrow's trial of marie posh so this moment between bernard and alexi is my favorite exchange in the game i'm almost sad it lacks a cutscene since it was like getting hit by a splash of cold water even after everything alexi just did in his war against parshan what his associates in turn did to us he still thinks it's worth pretending there's a high road let alone one he can take it's strange to see him say that killing marie would be disreputable since by now alexi mate we've killed so many people together for no one's benefit but our own going back to voice acting and character bios alexi is presented at first as unremarkable the most common sight of him is this slumped tired posture at the dinner table i took him as something of a player insert since when he's not talking he lacks presents you spend much of the game in his pov looking over the court he's a character that seems designed to get out of the way but this chapter sneaks him up on you that unassuming facade fooled both me and posh and it's here i got really invested in his character when i was playing by this point i was very much of two minds about this game i like the court i dislike basically every other aspect of gameplay but i was loving the story of a seemingly average man thrust into a cutthroat political underworld and using his courtroom an already corrupted symbol of justice he turns out to be very dangerous in we the revolution we don't play as alexi so much as we play the cold and calculating part of him the side that understands how the decisions he makes will play out alexi may say he has only ever done his job justly maybe he even believes it but we as the player get to see his thought process and know exactly how he weighs up his verdict alexi may genuinely love his family but he also understands them as tools the player is taught to treat them that way from moment one we get to see this with bernard alexis shows he doesn't so much care for bernard's own dreams and wishes he'd follow him into law there may be many reasons for this it could be due to alexi's implicit worry that bernard doesn't yet understand the world and his zeal will see him on the wrong side of the courtroom because yeah it's all sunshine and rainbows for you it could be a misguided belief that the life he has planned for him is better than bernard being his own man it could be simple parental arrogance it could be all that and more when i got to this intrigue i was surprised to find out how manipulative alexi can be but on reflection it's not like the game ever really hid that from me at the end of the day alexi is fascinating he interestingly toyed with my expectations of him being a player insert he's a character i really like and a person i really dislike but at least one i have a shred of sympathy for he's a believably well-intentioned hypocrite and the game pulls no punches in showing how destructive that combination can be [Music] [Music] frederick funny how it's possible to do that sorry moving on act 2 brings one new addition and explores ramel a bit further this starts with him explaining how our brother died saving ramel by dragging him from a losing battle and getting hit in the process the game tries to be clever with this tossing us into his story with a new turn-based battle mode this mode will become a bigger focus in the next act which is several hours away so audit tutorializing is jumping the gun a little since this won't be repeated this should have given you no details to create a sense of confusion and chaos then actually explain how it all works when we need to know how to play it i mean hey it sort of works anyway since this tutorial is sloppy and this is a losing battle anyway it was cute when i was able to waste the family tutorial since i'd actually be able to engage with those mechanics within the hour this should have been regimented better ramel had apparently also been banished from paris by his older brother he knows the pain of a broken family something shady and possibly related does happen we get a letter asking us how much we know about the man named ramel and inviting us to meet should we go we find our informant dead and ramel warns us against such meetings oh and there's a revolution in the von so rob is pierre is leaving to settle it personally and uh i'll see you in three years this also sticks us with a pretty lasting negative modifier which i guess makes the game a smidgen more difficult besides that act 2 is more of the same the two intrigues that make up its run time are fine they can't replicate the punch of posh but they give us a chance to explore some of wee's other ideas and further wear down alexi our next court case begins with a pile of condolences along with a mysterious note saying one of these people is responsible for fred's death oh that's intriguing anyway the next day whoever sent that loses faith and just tells us gobel did it and ramel has info it turns out gobel the archbishop of paris was meant for a military career that was until he had an illegitimate child and was sent to rome to join the clergy i guess he must have been told the church is good at having kids and got the wrong idea after finishing his education gobel came to paris to find the wife and child so we'll simply find them first and use them against him now gobel graduated in 1743 he's been pursuing these two for half a century i'd argue the odds are slim the plot begins with spreading rumors about the kid to stir the pot and maybe bring them out into the open let's talk about tinville he's one of my favorite characters in the game unlike alexi who seems simple at first only to slowly reveal themselves tinville is two-note yet one-dimensional in most cases he's presented as a capable prosecutor he asks the right questions and keeps people talking but the moment he comes across someone he believes to be a counter-revolutionary he becomes a rabid attack dog who wants nothing more than to see their head roll his rage clouding any sense in the form of form the game honestly seems to be toning the man down and giving him a really flattering showing in the latter lawsuits he's almost cartoonish in his fury and it's hard to say which one of these would be more accurate now there is some precedent after the law of 22 past silly things like witnesses trials lasting longer than three days and uh a defense council well these were considered extraneous boring they bogged the whole legal process down the jury was asked to acquit or execute based just on a moral judgment of the accused and the prosecutor was leading the show so tinville's bluster doesn't seem out of place the guy was nicknamed purveyor to the guillotine after all this comes to a head in what is perhaps the game's funniest trial a craftsman whose family specializes in chessboards has been dragged in by the gods and accused of spreading royalist propaganda it's a ridiculous concept that's mined for a lot of really good gags tinville steals the show he is very much the butt of the joke the one man who can't see what a complete sham this whole case is even the generally antagonistic gallery sees this whole thing as bogus they think tinville's off is nut gobel's intrigue brings tinville into the picture i was very much enjoying having tynville in the court i was enjoying that for all of his zeal and how dedicated to the law he appears he seemed blissfully unaware of just how corrupt the judge of his courtroom is he has made a patsy while the judge disposes of his own political rivals we both know that you are the author of the denunciation how can you be so sure i am not a fool you have eliminated roland and posh and now you are trying to get govel ah never mind tinville knew he just didn't care this doesn't get in the way of our plans to get tinville to investigate gobel using those rumors we stirred what's funny is this persuasion even has a unique failure state tinville will play a game of dice to see if luck favors alexi the man whose son was murdered several days ago so yeah it's a bit weird and i never would have guessed that was in his character that he believes in luck but sure that brings a new angle to what he's doing at the court turns out luck isn't on alexi's side who would have guessed as we're closing in on gobel the rumors of his child do bring the sprog into the picture he tries to go right to gobel and gobel makes a play he rejects the child declares himself an apostate and reveals that in five days he's going to publish a list of 73 traitors hinting robert's pierre is among them and considering days earlier we made a public display against gorbel it's not much of a stretch to say that we made the list oh now you come to me well alexis tells the guy to run before his dad has us all killed i guess alexi is just going to stay here and try to figure something out the situation seems impossible but impossible isn't french that saying really doesn't work in english and as the game puts it a perfect intrigue yeah perfect isn't how i would describe that conclusion but uh yeah let's keep going this intrigue drags alexi down a bit he goes up against a far more cautious and powerful opponent and his own plotting just doesn't pan out meanwhile ramel is clearly keeping something from us it's also joined by the reveal that even an idiot like tinville saw right through us alexi is not quite as discreet as he'd like to think it builds a good bit of tension and does manage to make another chip in alexi's armor after taking his son the game starts wounding him personally luckily the sun goes and kills gobel and as thanks for saving us i had to execute him it's funny how the theme of strained fatherhood is slipped into this story it's ever present but i never felt it as strongly as i did other aspects like freedom and justice unlike those it wasn't even until i started writing that i realized how consistently dastardly demanding dads had been a thing it's probably because parenthood while present isn't a powerful part of play that and because i have no children at least none that i know of the game opens with us judging our son i was unaware then that i was handing down a death penalty but aldrick feels his generation had more or less condemn those that follow to pain through their mistakes hardly a surprising view considering what he's been through perhaps we're just the second in a row alexi keeps his family around despite the peril gobel wanted to find and be rid of his son raymond's mentoring is well intentioned but ill-suited many of the trials explore parental bonds even king lewis is like a disappointed dad calling on uncle hre to beat his child into submission i shouldn't have said that and while all of this is going on we're also invited to a ball being held by none other than renard alexi isn't planning on going but he's promised the identity of his son's killer at the manor alexi is funneled through a sea of masked aristocrats renard is playing an intimidation game a game where he has plentiful experience thank you for accepting our invitation that's why everyone hates aristocrats i didn't really feel like having a choice english not your first language eh fair point thank you anyway renard talks about how the rich are now being persecuted as the poor once were and that soon the tide will turn back in their favor our moves have only served to unite the aristocracy but we're not here for that we're here to meet this mask gentlemen i personally think that our disguised partner overestimates you he has also reassured us that he doesn't intend to kill any other member of your family he killed my child you did that see how powerful we the highborne have become josh renard this isn't about you he offers a game of dice if we win we'll be delivered yet another man who helps kill our child fine let's play we've avenged this kid about twice already but sure let's go for the hat trick i play along and win the next day the accused is none other than raymond he was dragged to court after an anonymous letter sent the guards to his home where he was found sobbing and far from sober drunkenly begging to know if frederick was alive his part in our son's death was minor turns out ray hasn't seen his own son in a long time his drinking created a rift in the family leading his wife to an early grave and driving his son to join the military he's now a deserter awaiting death in return for details about our life he was promised that his son would be saved he's obviously filled with regret that he went along with it saying he never thought it would lead to this i wound up acquitting rey going against the jury and making some difficulty for myself besides if you reject to play dice or lose the game continues on and in my run raymond later took his own life the guilt hadn't gotten to him and the promises about his son being little more than lies it's time to talk about choices if you read the steam reviews they sit up mostly positive which does about line up with my personal experience most every review that likes the game likes it in spite of one feature or another the second most common criticism behind the shallow sampling platter approach to gameplay is that choices don't matter no matter what you do you are prisoner to a linear story burrell loses his job frederick his life your enemies flee and matild despises you as i was playing and as i came to realize how little agency i had it didn't take long to put together that was the point as ramel tells alexi they are men who don't allow others to control their lives ironic to say to a video game protagonist doubly so to one who has done everything because someone else set him to do it triply ironic considering napoleon is coming the game pretends to have choice in every aspect since both you and alexi are meant to believe in your own free will the hierarchy screen paints a world of cause and effect that implies agency but your path through it is preordained the targets of your intrigue even when you spare them will have to flee paris and be crossed off the screen when raymond preached mercy being its own reward even if death soon followed i said it was a hint to the true nature of our choices and this is why raymond for the record who may well have been forced into his role in our son's death aldrich speculates that when raymond brokered the deal for bruno's life he didn't get renard's approval without koster himself to think this game not altering the course of events based on your choices as a flaw is like thinking doom is a lesser game because the ending doesn't account for not killing demons the framing of the games is different but either way it's missing the point your choices in way the revolution matter because they don't to entertain another thought even if this isn't explicitly a question the game is asking what if we the revolution did change endings based on how many people you spared would your choice to spare people despite difficulty to yourself become more or less moral some people would say it doesn't matter but that's not what we're arguing about if you're aware the game isn't accounting for it and you spare them anyway you're doing it without expectation of reward it's inherently more selfless if you're expecting it to pay off for you you're sparing them for your own benefit the decision is tainted now as humans rigged with survival instincts i'm not saying it's wrong to factor your own gain into choices like this it's perfectly understandable but in video games we're detached from any actual danger and weird little moral questions like this can be explored it seems with games we're rigged to expect them to pass on the back for doing the right thing and people seem to lash out when that isn't followed up on regardless of context or what the point of the story is in past videos i've been harsh on false choices but we the revolution integrates them well by weaving them into the narrative it's only a trick for so long the game isn't exactly subtle about it and i can say with confidence it wants you to realize this is happening i think it's a cool idea that works well as a theme layered into a political thriller to think you're in control and slowly realize there are forces both literal and thematic going against that it's a trick that can only work so well with interactivity some people also just can't stand playing as an unlikable protagonist and look some people don't like spicy food it's okay some of us are condemned to bland taste to keep the fourth intrigue brief we're going up against robbers pierre so we need powerful backing to that end we forge an alliance between danton and hebert i'm gonna call him herbert it's wrong i don't care their meeting is tense but that's alexi's fault for picking a place with such intense lighting in an attempt on rob's blood pressure danton gives up his place in the committee while alexi convinces tinville to take it tinville is clean and ambitious so rob will see this as a threat henrio however betrays us and takes rob's side danton and herbert are arrested and we can only trial one i have no idea why we're allowed to try either it seems like rob would want to keep us as far away from them as possible but uh let's have a look danton it is i get him acquitted and both him and herbert flee paris thanks guys you're really sticking your necks out for me so we try and arrest henry o fail and he later dies in the story anyway but then alexi decides it let's just promise everyone who helps us cushy careers and convince the entire convention robert pierre's gotta go yeah i just truncated us taking down the most important historical figure present but this intrigue is pretty clumsy and not in an interesting way like gobel's snatched victory let's talk about robespierre's final months the law of 22 tanks opinion of him he kills danton and herbert along with many of their followers he then becomes massively paranoid he appears on a fake mountain wearing a toga he shot himself in the mouth which broke his streak of shooting himself in the foot and his brother wanting in on the action dived out of a window and fell just a hair slower than the guillotine which killed all of them things get a bit more orderly for a moment but there is a reaction now if you're expecting an idiot gaming youtuber to come away with a definitive take on an incredibly complicated and nuanced period of history that historians have stood over for their lives i'm sorry to say that like napoleon i'll come up short but i can say with confidence the game misses a trick by showing robespierre as just an evil despot robert's pierre the revolution and we the revolution began by promising freedom that turned out bloody and hollow the game could have tapped into this and made the theme more apparent in its portrayal of robbers pierre as i learn more about him i understand that he had to go if his proposed virtues and the war of 22 weren't all part of a hidden agenda from the get-go then the man became and died a hypocrite who swore liberty before shackling the very people he made that oath to besides a big blade it's hard to say what was going through his head come the end if he doesn't deserve sympathy he should at least get some complexity for the sake of the story told it's already attempted nuanced interpretations of even more one-dimensional historical figures he could have stood as the perfect antagonist to tie these ideas of choice into a neat little bow the good news is the game will try to wrap up this theme the bad news is it will do it in the most mind-numbing way possible with an even worse villain your eyes were never so empty but today i want you to be proud of me by now matilda's just done her husband snaked his way to the top so much blood is on his hands one of their kids is dead yet he still wants her to be proud of him unfortunately for both of them the universe isn't quite done with alexi fidel as goons bust in and take the family hostage and you know what alexi really had it coming the guy just never stopped going to work he got stabbed his son died he made enemies of everyone in paris but nine to five you knew where to find him say what you want about the guy's morality but his work ethic was second to none oh god a skyrim yeah she had sex with a 14 year old boy uh i'm gonna quit because i think this would please the aristocracy no i just pissed off everybody alexi is brought before none other than bum bum his banished brother bruno you were in the dark for so long remember that guy in the intro brained someone with a rock had father issues well that was bruno and that poor geezer on the floor is what he's about to do to the story it turns out bruno didn't die on the front lines he was captured and when they forced him to play a game of dice for his limbs now bit of a sore loser he fled after one bad round from there he headed back to paris deciding to take up arm against everyone he's decided has wronged him i was able to escape and started planning my revenge on our family the father on everyone who had disowned me revenge on us you should lay the blame on clemorina he was the one to i blame you all father you france you want to hurt your own family you disowned me as god disowned cain ramel and him were in cahoots ramel was sent to us to stir our desire for power and guide us along the path bruno wanted while he somehow got in good with the aristocrats and pulled their strings we dealt with the rolands posh gobel and robespierre this was all bruno's plot from the very beginning and he played us like a damn fidel he needed the revolution to happen this way so he could build an army from the people hurt by it all along we've been feeding the people wronged and abandoned by france into his ranks he really kept his army up his sleevy his corruption of us this was his revenge on uldrick in his eyes the death of another sudden wouldn't hurt as much as watching the survivor become yet another villain and he's sure that aldrich would then abandon alexi as he did him well spoiler for that when this is explained to aldrich he says bruno died years ago that man isn't his son and uldrick is basically the only person to never give up on alexi his faith in his remaining son is absolute and honestly rather sweet then we're made to play for bernard's arms three rounds of dice for his digits and you will always lose at least once since this chapter is dedicated to screaming in your face that choice isn't real ramel then busts in and saves us because i've told this story a bit out of order but honestly after this scene i was checked out harder than matild bruno is returning with his army in several days he's gonna storm paris and take it over we're screwed to the game's credit i didn't see this twist coming even with what i now realized was a mountain of foreshadowing i'd like to say i didn't see it coming because i respected the game too much to expect something this stupid i always took those moments with bruno as good fuel for alexi's character and they still are but the fact that this is what it's leading up to just leaves a bad taste in my mouth it wants to let bruno eat cake and have it too the game treats him as an unstable lunatic who misread how aldrich will respond he's blood-thirsty and short-sighted and he was shunned all across france saved purely by some measure of tainted luck yet he's also a cunning fox who twisted all of france around his finger misleading the very aristocracy that banned him while building an army of disaffected commoners through us it wants to have it both ways with bruno individually these are terrible resolutions to the story we just had put together if i wasn't so disappointed i'd find it laughable i get what the game is trying to do with bruno as alexi would say he has a raison d'etre false choices destroying his life sins of the father coming full circle fraternity it turns out the real revolution is his revolution with frederick he funneled us down a path of incredibly imprecise and wide-reaching revenge putting alexian the player on the same path as bruno before meeting us at the pass i'll also admit his reveal does actually smooth over some lingering questions i'd had perhaps roland believes i trampled on his name at trial because bruno told him i did no more family members died because bruno was exact in how he wanted to hurt us and well the fact there was only one attempt on our life was strange since yeah as i said alexi doesn't miss work he'd make any assassin's day with how much of a routine he lives by so yeah his inclusion isn't without merit and he's a turkey stuffed with meaning but stuff him he ruined my trip to the convention this is why robespierre becomes so disappointing in retrospect he's also a charismatic and driven man rendered unstable but considering the history it's something that actually happened did the game just push rob's pierre under the gear team to just do him again with their own super cool mysterious brother character the theme of illusory choice just becomes ham-fisted with the way bruno brings it to bear the reason i was able to say with confidence that lack of choice was the point was because the game with confidence lost all confidence in a single scene we the revolution manages to overplay its hand drop the ball and boot it over a shark my faith in the right and going backwards from here is tested also act 3 hasn't technically started yet but it i've reasserted some control and moved this arbitrary title card forward everything we've done is then leaked to marat which he publishes and dies in a bathtub which would later be carried through the streets of paris as part of his funeral meanwhile david is so disgusted with what we've done that he buggers off and hopes history forgets about all of this too bad david i'm gonna make sure they remember and i'm sorry to say that after that one scene kills so much good will the game's not going to win it back a few days later we join alexi as he's busily sat around waiting for bruno to come kill him terror is nothing but swift justice and now an army of outcasts marches towards us to present their interpretation of those words do you come to arrest me alexis sounds so excited just to get this over with i came to tell you that certain people believe everything you did you did for the benefit of france who are you officer tomar alexander dumas from the french army at your service so tomorrow bruno's army arrives and the military's a dozen days away dumas wants to enlist our help in defending paris i think you're talking to the wrong person just let me die on this table okay i am talking to a predator i am talking to a person who is not averse to killing other citizens and that is what awaits us we will have to ruthlessly murder frenchmen who stand on the other side of the barricades i love this scene for just how far beyond it all alexi looks this is one of the best expressions ever drawn it rival's tails gets trolled for just how much it's saying alexi almost wants to argue but man what's the point if you won't let me pass away at this table i've got more at home you think i'm scared of disappointing my family anyway enough delaying he's got an army and he'll entrust them to us if we make him the first black general of france those people believe that if they are scared of you our enemy should be even more terrified hand me a piece of paper and a pen general the map screen changes from a social strategy to a city defense in what i'll admit is a cool little recontextualization we're given a random set of units the amount dictated by reputation and we're told to spread them around doing this feels clumsy since the spaces you have to place the units in is somewhat precise while rui goes for an imprecise semi-skew morphic design meanwhile the bar for setting the amount of units is actually wider than it appears it gets even more annoying if you want to shuffle units around since if you want to put them back in the toolbar you have to drag them back into their proper place along it it's a headache to do even the most basic things and it never feels good to use and you have to engage with this a lot over the next several hours these little headaches add up because it always means you're thinking about avoiding the ui shortcomings rather than just playing the game bruno's assault path is predetermined and if he takes part of the city it can't be reclaimed so at the start we only have to deal with one very hard battle per day if he takes that section then he'll attack every neighboring district and while these battles will be a bit easier i just don't want him taking sections since easy or not that means every day is three times as long each day and during each battle citizens will flee our secondary goal is to give time for people to evacuate the achievement for doing well in this section is for saving half of them which should tell you how well you're expected to do so here's how the battle system works you take your assortment of barely explained units you can tag out a unit slot for a healer which well you want the healer since they buffer rose defense immensely you have a set of tactics and you can sort of see how each of them will play out once picked each side makes their move this plays out painfully slowly so let's turn on my audio track this chapter takes ages every day is at least one battle and as it goes on this will only get worse these sluggish slugfest take roughly three minutes each and that's after i knew the optimal strategy i know by now that mashing the mouse doesn't do anything but i have to do anything to pass the time this is just the perfect follow-on after the story had wrecked my investment in it to play an awkward shallow but strangely obtuse and intentionally frustrating battle system three minutes may not sound like much but trust me with repetition like this and my investment dead three minutes can feel like a very long time when you're just stewing in disappointment the battles are ones of attrition since damage is unavoidable you have to lose units each new day sees some more random unfortunate souls filter in i wish i could spend my influence points to get the troops i wanted but well that's not what the game is going for this segment wants you to feel like you're barely holding on and keep the pressure at a high when you see you don't get fresh artillery it's meant to sting it's just that the pace is too glacial to be tense and the gameplay is too tedious to have the needed punch as you lose areas and civilians die your reputation drops meaning you now have to hold more places with less troops the battles are functionally easier but it's balanced for your hole to gradually erode it's just god just erode faster the already slow days get slower and i'll confess that in a misguided effort to speed this up i probably made it longer for myself i kept resetting until i found an optimal strategy i hated the battles enough that i was driven especially hard to understand them and i eventually found it in a guide when i gave up now i regret doing this it was stupid petty wasteful and while i do not like this mechanic and do not think it got what it set out for i ruined it further for myself but since i did it here's the strap you have to work from the back row forwards entrenchment defends the front row and will wreck enemy artillery then suppressing fire eliminates enemy gunners while the forward row continues to hold then frontline assault to kill the remaining infantry all while a medic caters to your cannons this approach was by far the most safe though i was still losing units and if the enemy uses entrenchment on their first turn it all falls apart if i lose my cannons and don't get new ones it all falls apart this game well it already fell apart but it's not done eventually your grip loosens and at that point you're not going to regain your hold but still i managed to keep them to one section oh yeah i was never lucky enough to have enough cannons for two districts so what is dumas doing exactly well he's the auto battle option but he basically always loses the effectiveness rating and the units you place don't actually seem to mean anything and he will always fail to hold the first section turns out dumas is a dumbass thank god your son took up writing instead this mode is just terrible such an awful addition to close the gameplay on it's all of the game's worst aspects of ambiguity and guesswork design with none of the intrigue or thoughtfulness of the court none of the intrigue and intrigue of intrigues like speeches it's meant to be a bit confusing at first so you have to learn and adapt only the situation is so much more perilous people's lives are at stake so you're pressured to learn fast this is meant to be a culmination of all the other gameplay styles lives on the line confusion unfairness death but it's so dull to play if it was sped up and didn't come after such a schlocky story swerve perhaps i'd be a little bit more positive to it but that's a long shot clever segway go oh wait i said the word intrigue in the last paragraph there's another of those and it's as half-baked as this battling with the city under siege jermaine desdale decides to use this moment to campaign for women's rights and as the game puts it if we don't stop this today we may not wake up tomorrow she goes to alexi who i guess is just in charge of paris now and lays down what's gonna happen she's read the reports she knows how good a schemer we are so tomorrow we have to go and convince the men to support women's rights if we don't meet all of their demands they'll simply stop helping the war effort pretty compelling i'll beat some sense into my wife later yeah this'll be rough who supported you when you were bearing the standards of the revolution they carried them at your sides with you but we can't treat them any better they're not a fan what's hilarious is the best result in this situation is doubtful even with only perfect arguments well now you've confused us what on earth made you negotiate with hags they just can't comprehend it now alexi isn't actually on de stale's side so right after talking to the men folk he has grace elliot arrested and gets her to work fabricating evidence against the stale the next day we can either arrest and try to stale or just sign off on the declaration of women's rights which i do the next day i get a letter of thanks from all women cheers that's how it ends by the way bit abrupt a strange half-length back and forth has no time for its subject matter let's flash back a second act one was called liberte besides the obvious context of the french revolution in game terms this is the part where new choices are being revealed to you at every turn alexia and the player are ignorant to what all of this means egalites well i could argue it's where alexi levels the playing field with his enemies truth be told a galate better suits act 1 as well considering we kill the king and revolutions in full swing but hey they've gone with a theme and it's my job to mine some meaning out of it so act three is fraternity and it isn't just being literal with bruno it's one thing to preach equality start arguing what equality even means and all the while deny it to half the population especially when women were fighting right alongside the men weird as it sounds i'm worried i got no pushback for this no negative modifiers no loss of influence or opinion i made a choice that should have seen people turn on me we saw those blokes the thing is we're so close to the end by now it can't meaningfully account for this decision even if it wanted to we the revolution skims this even more than it skims most other aspects of the revolution the whole finale feels emptier than alexi's life it could be that without ramel guiding alexi he now just goes right for the throat trimming as much fat from his plan as possible to focus on bruno it could be to show how weak a position women have that alexi could just easily get some dirt under sale fabricated but it doesn't change that it's just abrupt and besides how funny the ending is it just isn't that interesting and wait hang on a second we could try this dale yeah alexi is still going to work in the morning despite everything that's happened he has taken a grand total of two days off that's just one number higher than his remaining son's arms by now i don't even feel the trials i'm like alexi we're still united because we're both dead inside i know i've got to do battles in the evening and i can't even find joy in sending people to the gear team anymore i'm just murdered out anyway despite giving matild rights she left bernard left too because he only has a right i do actually think the relationship between alexi and aldrick is one of game's strengths there's a bit of sweetness to aldrich's endless faith in his son even if they've in some ways steered each other wrong after the next day we're confronted by a broken matild muttiled no not again i do not understand yeah father do you hear me always alexia waits on the table of the puppets here who are you i am the truth about your unhappiness and a lie about your greatness if bruno didn't spell the message out the puppeteer is a blasting neon sign that our choices were illusory our path predetermined not just by people pulling our strings figuratively but by a literal universal force are you ready to admit that it is my performance my show and now he's offering the only real choice we'll ever have to live and be a hero or die on this table oh man if only you got me a few days ago despite the fact we've held the line for eight days now and reinforcements are less than a work week away a normal person's not sodding alexis he complains bruno's unbeatable shut the up alexi tell me when was the last time you read all the files connected you as well shut it you're all annoying me i hate that it tosses in this paranormal at the last second i've enjoyed most of the story but i've never taken it as incredibly clever or thought that there was some real deep to say just that it's been an entertaining thriller with some good undertones to dig into a bit of food for four and it trying to make it all some deterministic wank like this at the last second is just tossing out everything good the plot had and for what the reason i liked it when i was picking up on it during gobel and robespierre's arcs wasn't just because oh it's subtle me smart critic because it wasn't subtle then despite steam reviews so well turns out those people need all the help they can get it's literally spelled out for them and they just complain that multiple endings don't exist instead of tackling why this doesn't work so lies that you are here for power for the numerous choices and endings i have not designed you for that and subtlety isn't some nectar from heaven it's about how you want to present the ideas you got so i'm not saying this is because it lacks subtlety it's because it just detracts from everything good that came before it having it as a backing theme of a political thriller let me stew on it think about it it was a dash of spice in the story that we think we have choices while actually we were having our strings pulled figuratively again having it place second fiddle to a second fidel was weak and felt like failing confidence but it was leagues better than having it be all about choices and having everything be preordained besides the option to die in such a stupid swerve what does this add to our historical drama beyond maybe excusing its anachronistic indulgences anachronisms i didn't care about i already accepted them for the sake of the story the idea was arguably more impactful when it was just subtext because it had wormed its way into me it's when the game tries to force it on me that i start to resist it this game ends with enough bomb notes to play scales more bum notes than a arse orchestra so i choose not to die mostly out of spite but don't worry i'll show the other ending will they accept me they do not have to but you will defend them anyway so the next day marks the final court case turns out knifing your hubby's a crime so welcome back to family court truth be told this is actually a great case to end on the pretense of this being anything other than a really dark and bitter argument instead of a trial is instantly dropped alexi and matilde just spend the whole time trading bobs and tinville is powerless to stop it it's also confirmed you can't spell henrio without ntr i sort of hate she was cackling after stabbing us because this cold airing of the grievances is so much stronger than her just being crazy i guess that knife let the air out and now the healing can begin this trial better than bruno and the bloody puppeteer do for choice puts a really neat bow on the family gameplay the fact that it's a tiny insignificant spec on our radar is brought full circle as yeah no she and the family felt powerless and neglected we spent more time pursuing our power plays even before we were thrown into big danger only aldrich didn't feel that way and that's because he fed that desire alexi had anyway good point wife acquitted get the out of here the jury in tinville flee shortly after and on the 12th day reinforcements delayed i just want this over i don't appreciate this little prank so i just throw my hands up if bruno wants paris that much he can have it and it turns out the game is programmed to just keep going until you have just your home district left at the time i thought i had limped over the finish line but it turns out you have no choice but to lose it all in walks bruno saying his siege of paris was all a ploy to introduce us to our new conqueror his name is napoleon bonaparte and by doing this he's won i never wanted to take over the city i've just introduced you to your new dictator i won sure mate sure this was all your big brain play with basically nothing left to do bruno brandishes a pistol and they'll settle this with a test of luck the favorite shall kill the loser shooting him in the head let's talk about dice there's nothing left to talk about they only come up a handful of times but i think it's the game trying to get a round choice trying to softball it so that when the puppeteer claims you've never made real choices it can pretend that was the case what about with renard well we didn't actually agree to get the identity of our killer we agreed to a game of dice doesn't count to what degree wasn't that a choice is it because it's now a matter of destiny not decision i don't know i'm tired this game's messaging is just so sloppy that by now it's just throwing pseudo-thoughtful garbage my way with this ending we don't choose whether or not we shoot bruno we leave it in the hands of fate and so it seems like the puppeteer gave us our only true moment of freedom god this is lame you have all believed in this romantic rebellion tell me no outside alexi feels strangely sad that people are welcoming napoleon as a hero his part in protecting paris seemingly already forgotten [Music] hiro the puppeteer and his kid arrived to cheer alexi up and make my eyes roll harder than the dice we just closed with man if only david was here to see this [Music] who shall be next [Music] post credits in the modern day alexi is remembered as the hero of paris since as you know figures from the french revolution are often remembered so cleanly and here's the alternate ending if he dies on the table honestly probably for the best this game comes off as so uncertain about what he even wants to say about linearity and false choice but comes off as confident about whatever it is the claim to live or die is our only real choice feels undermined by the fact it has less impact than many supposedly false choices we've made along the way a lot of people took my walking dead video as holy negative a blunt criticism that we are lied to by having choices that only change small aspects instead of changing the course of entire stories when that was not my intent a failure of clarity on my end perhaps but for season one of that game and for we the revolution i'll say that i don't consider the ability to change parts of the tone characters and ornamentation but not the path of a story to be a bad thing it's about the framing and the story itself the tools should aid the construction and the construction should be good yet we is leading you along believing its own choices are completely devoid of value waiting to jump out and yell see we knew all along tragically misunderstanding that it wasn't actually doing anything wrong until the moment it takes that leap if it had kept choice's subtext let alexi run roughshod over revolutionary paree before the fermidorian reaction or napoleon or the restoration crushed him under history's uncaring boot this theme would have said more by not having to say anything concrete at all and not even just about choices but about history legacy liberty and even fraternity alexi is a cruel man who caused great misery but the game seems sympathetic because it presents him as a man prisoner to the cruelties of the where and when his victories are close fraught with danger and short-lived he played the game and couldn't quite cut it to lay it out in the open and attribute it to the power of fiction itself not only drastically culls the scope of the message and takes a lot of meaning away from it it also puts the idea up for a scrutiny that suggests consistency a consistency which when actually found only serves to undermine the point it supposedly wants to make it lane switches into a dead end looking at this in mechanical not thematic terms the choice to imprison louis instead of executing him creates greater change even within the narrative itself alexi's death changes a line of dialogue and a headstone this trial decides between a graphic and a fully voiced cutscene the game wants you to realize you're a puppet on strings but doesn't realize its own wires got crossed hang on is that why alexi sounds wooden because he's a puppet oh off ending on dice feels ultimately desperate because what it wants to say is that alexi has realized that fate owns him he's accepted his place in a cruel and deterministic world and come to understand its harsh rules everyone who went in his courtroom rolled these dice if the judge needed you to live that day you would if not tough luck but hey nothing personal we're all at the mercy of others here so alexi agrees to play and if he loses the outcome of this game won't contradict him he chose to live it was fate that decided he had to die it wants to say that and i suppose in a way it does but the words ring hollow so yeah so not to judge it too harshly but we the revolution may be one of the most bloated titles i've ever played an indecisive stumbling mess of a game one that can spell out exactly what it's doing and still have people judge it for exactly that while seemingly never seeing the intentionality or perhaps just not caring one accidentally perfect game to play after yeek the illusion of choice has become a recurrent topic in games i cover and to be honest i don't think there's a silver bullet it's arrogant and naive to demand that all choices be catered to it just can't happen without tons of time budget and planning scope is a monstrous thing we the revolution for a time had me appreciating the way it tackled false choices by turning belief in my agency into my and alexi's downfall i in a way saw it coming but i wanted to play along because the game had charmed me to play along then i'd get more out of the game i'd enjoy my time rather than regret it the way it then ran everything i was enjoying about it into the ground was my trust abused maybe but i doubt this was an act of malice we should be open to let stories toy with us even if it stings worse when they drop the ball the character of alexi was almost going to be an all-time favorite i was seeing him as a walter white-like figure in how he pretended not to be who he truly was hiding his true colours as best he could even from himself but the way the story goes and to a lesser extent a wooden performance just goes against him as for the gameplay well it's an overloaded mess in pursuing mechanics that tried to supplement and tie into the story being told it winds up distracting since you spend every in-game day swapping between totally different games that have varying amounts of importance to the ongoing narrative from semilogical guesswork to memorization to probability to strategy it's too many flavors and winds up undercutting the very thing it's going for it's the helicopter parent of gaming trying to do everything for its little story but winding up obstructive and overbearing much like for sake for those who took my word satisfied their curiosity and played it i hope i don't actually have to be sorry i sent you down that road the ending is an unbelievable botched job but even then its gameplay and theme seem to rub plenty of people the wrong way to begin with i hope you can appreciate that i do believe it's a game worth experiencing for good and for a lot of ill you may feel your time was wasted by many of its elements but if you can claw any intrigue from the time spent it wasn't wasted and i hope this video entertained and informed i ended greed for by hoping 2020 would be good and for a lot of people it's been rough i hope to have more consistent releases in 2021 but more than that i just hope the next year is less historical than this one a bit easier for all it turns out living in historical times can be a little boring but i hope next year i'll be right alongside to hopefully make your days just that bit more laid back if next year is even worse i'll stop ending the last video of each year with well wishing because despite everything the game just taught me i may have more power than i know so that was we the revolution and next up is yakuza 5 which just got announced for pc which makes things more confusing for me if you want to support me please spread this video around if you want to support me more directly i have a patreon filled with the lovely people scrolling past it has benefits such as access to a patreon discord which is very laid back access to scripts and notes at free dollars and bonus after for videos at five dollars where i answer viewer questions about the game in question and that was awkward and tie up any extra thoughts so i'll see you all soon court is adjourned merry christmas this is a good christmas game right

Channel: Tehsnakerer

Views: 88,610

Rating: 4.9477468 out of 5

Keywords: we. the revolution, playing We. The Revolution, we the revolution, We the revolution review, we the revolution essay, french revolution game, historical game, game review, we the revolution tehsnakerer, We. The Revolution analysis, we. the revolution gameplay, we the revolution gameplay, Playing Tehsnakerer, Playing we the revolution

Id: qsLnIkv1tZA

Length: 119min 41sec (7181 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 25 2020