Leaving for the night isn’t safe for anyone.
But the war had changed us all, to the point where I’m not sure what was worse: That he was obviously having a full blown mental breakdown, or that I had lost a capable pair of hands for chores. That didn’t help me deal with the guilt of doing so as my character fell into a deep depression, unable to do much of anything before collapsing into an inconsolable mass.
Eventually, I had to steal from that elderly couple in order to survive. There are no easy decisions in This War of Mine. They couldn’t fight back if I wanted to take them, but I’d be issuing them a death sentence. Then, there’s also the old couple sitting on a lot of medical supplies that the old woman needs in order to survive. The abandoned building is vacant, but doesn’t offer much in terms of materials. The apartment complex is filled with bandits, but holds a lot of food. But, should a trader make his way past the snipers or I manage to find one at night…well, I could make pretty penny selling those cigarettes.Īs the days go on, you’ll discover more locations you can attempt to salvage from, but they’re not all created equally. I could spend my raw materials to build a comfortable chair and roll a few cigarettes in some hope that maybe, just maybe, for five damn minutes I could forget the utter and complete hell my life had become. Cooking food you’ve found, building contraptions to collect rain water and piecing together beds so as to not sleep on the cold and unforgiving floor.Įvery moment resembles some sort of choice. You’ll spend these meager hours of relative peace and quiet attempting to build something that resembles a life. What they are is a collection of ordinary people who have seen their city turn to shit before their very eyes, and have been forced to hole up with each other with the faint hope of survival.ĭuring the day, the area is besieged by snipers and enemy troops, so there’s nary a thought of leaving your shelter.
They don’t have combat training, they won’t save the day, and they’re not going to take the enemy by storm and free their homelands. The people you control in This War of Mine aren’t heroes in the traditional sense. What we often forget are the people who are caught in the crossfire, and that’s where This War of Mine comes in. It’s not heroics and cool guys not looking at explosions in fact, it can be downright boring if you happen to be lucky enough. The game starts with a quote by Ernest Hemmingway that seems to perfectly set the stage for the rest of the experience: “In modern war… you will die like a dog for no good reason.” Movies and video games have forever tinted war in the eyes of men, especially those lucky enough to have never seen it. What I didn’t know, though, is how well it would do it, and just how soul-crushingly desperate of a situation I was about to be forced to handle. I knew this wasn’t going to be a happy story, and I knew that it was going to try to take me somewhere mentally that I’d otherwise be hesitant to go. So, while I don’t judge a book by its cover, I can generally guess what I’m getting into before I start.
I’ve been doing this gig for some time now, and I’ve reviewed all sorts of different games.