It's A Long Story...

I had every intention of posting a Katie Jane Garside retrospective today but then I got up this morning and finished what looks to be the First Book of Nightingale, so I thought I'd better write about that instead, while it's still fresh in my mind. Katie Jane has waited more than thirty years for me to recognize her talent. I don't suppose she'll mind waiting a little longer.

So, here's the thing about Nightingale I don't see anyone talking about: it has a really strong story. Certainly the best I've seen in a survival game, which may be damning it with the faintest of praise, but even extending the reach to MMOs, it's right up there with the best. 

Again, not really selling it, am I?

Let me be more specific. As far as I'm aware, Nightingale has just one, single narrative thread. It's crisp, clear, coherent and meaningful. If you follow it, it takes you through the whole game, up to the point where you arrive at The Watch, whereupon the game stops being a solo survival RPG and turns into a lobby MMO.

As you advance through the game, it looks for a while as if you're just picking up the usual fetch quests from those various NPCs developers employ to guide you towards new explorable areas or quest hubs. After a while, though, you begin to realise that none of these are just breadcrumb quests. Nor are any of them either optional or independent of the others.

All of them, without exception, relate directly to your one, central purpose, which is to get back to Nightingale. In that respect the game has a clarity of intent rarely seen even in single-player RPGs. If you want to play Nightingale as anything other than a freeform building game, you have to do the main storyline quest. All of it.

To be strictly accurate, I can't say for absolute certain that there are no side-quests. There is that one involving Bass Reeves that I talked about before. I still haven't been able to finish it because I'm not willing to break the promise I gave him, not to talk to Wilhelmina about his mission in the Realms. I'm reasonably sure, however, that if I did tell her what he's up to, it would only feed back into that central narrative, not spiral off into some unrelated escapade.

Although the storyline is effectively single-minded, it never feels linear. The path to The Watch continually splits into byways then loops back around. By the time you find Nellie Bly on top of her sandstone massif, you have effectively reached the geographical end-point of the questline. Not to be too spoilery about it, she's standing next to the portal that will take you to The Watch. All you have to do is help her get it working.

Doing that took me about half of the seventy hours I've put into the game so far. It could have taken me a lot less, had I opted to go down the traditional murder-hobo route, which is offered as an option. Getting the portal machine into a stable condition requires items from three creatures it would not be too innacurate to call Boss Mobs. I imagine if you opt simply to find and kill them you could get it done in an hour or so, especially if you also make the charm you can use to take you straight to them.

If you listen to reason, though, and opt for trade instead of assassination, you'll find yourself enmeshed in a series of fascinating conversations with remarkable individuals concerning the lore and mores of the Fae realms. They will tell you what you need to do to get the things you need from the powerful creatures who have them, but first, naturally, they 'll want you to do something for them.

When you satisfy their needs, they'll give you a list of ingredients and you'll spend many more hours searching for rare materials to craft the ritual oferings you'll eventually hand over to the various Elders you otherwise would have had to kill. In return, those Elders will give you what Nellie needs to work her engineering magic so she can send you through the portal to meet her boss, Allan Quatermain, greatest of all the Realmwalkers and the one man who might actually know a way to get you back to Nightingale.

All of this takes a long time. I think it probably took me about thirty hours from finding Nellie Bly to speaking with Quatermain this morning. That thirty hours sits on top of another thirty or so during which I needed to raise my powers to a height where I could master the six Sites of Power, access to all of which is necessary before you can complete Nellie's quests. 

In this fashion, every aspect of the game is dependent on every other. The game tells you from the very start that getting back to Nightingale is the be-all and end-all of your existence and so long as you accept that premise, everything you're tasked with doing makes absolute and perfect sense. It's one of the most focused gaming experiences I can remember outside of a point and click adventure game, which at times is what I felt as though I was playing.

That in itself would be enough to make Nightingale's storytelling stand out but there's another layer. Remember Puck? He's the impish and mysterious Fae, who introduces himself at the beginning of the Tutorial and keeps popping up ever afterwards. He's also the only character with a voice actor, so you know he's important.

Puck, it will surprise no-one to hear, has an agenda and as a Fae he is not to be bargained with lightly. If only you had a choice about that. It would be very inappropriate of me to give away what he has to tell or  to reveal what the consequences of listening to him might be, but I will say that what Puck reveals sets up the future of the game in a way I found both enticing and intriguing. The story is just beginning, it seems.

The structure and the plotting, then, feel exemplary for a game of this kind, so it would be as well the writing and dialog were up to the same standard. And they are.

I'm picky about these things. I cut imported games with shaky translations a huge amount of slack because I love whimsy and their infelicities and mistakes frequently make me laugh. For game written in English, however, I don't always show the same leniency. I react strongly against anything that smacks of Fantasy Blockbuster Novel writing for a start and neither do I react well to maudlin sentimentality, worthy earnestness, leaden, lumpen prose or sophomoric "wit".

The writing in Nightingale mostly avoids all of these traps and tropes. Its main fault is verbosity, something I'm hardly in a position to criticise, but for the most part the dialog feels very much in keeping with the supposed nineteenth century setting, without straying into the uncomfortable hinterlands of pastiche or parody. 

That, at least, applies to almost all of the quest dialog which, it should be said, can be extensive. There are many ancillary conversations to be explored before you get to the inevitable acceptance of the task on offer. 

Most of those conversations are optional, so if you don't care to dig into motivations and circumstances, the choice to take the job, no questions asked, is usually there. You will miss a lot of interesting back-story that way but at least you'll be done in time for tea.

As for the many letters, notes, journal entries and other scraps of paper you'll come across, scattered around the Realms, there I'm not quite as convinced. Having the private journal of a nineteenth century adventure seem over-written to the point of incomprehensibility may well be an authentic representation of the form but it doesn't make for much of a fun read in a video game.

That, though, is about my only negative criticism of the writing in Nightingale. Other than that, I found the story involving, entertaining and informative throughout. I'm very keen to find out where it goes next, although I'm not even sure if the next chapter is in game yet. As for the way the narrative informs and gives purpose to the gameplay, I can't remember when - or if - I've seen it done better.

All of which would be a storming recommendation for a single-player RPG. Whether it's such an unalloyed compliment for a game sometimes described as a sandbox is another matter. It is extremely directive, after all and taken as a purely narrative experience it might also be a little dry.

Where it shines is in the combination of its various strands and the harmonious way in which they come together to weave a singular experience. After seventy hours and what feels like a satisfying conclusion, I could almost stop playing now. 

I'm not going to, of course.