Of Orcs and Men took me nearly a year to finish, from the
day I purchased it to the day the end credits rolled. It was, all things considered, an uneven,
ambitious and tremendously original concept, undeveloped and haphazardly
executed with the best of intentions and some pretty keen design insight on
display. And unlike the affable Space
Pirates and Zombies, another game that has kept me preoccupied for over a year
of my life (nearly the entire span of my time in New York, in fact) when I
abandoned of Orcs and Men it was not because I felt frustrated or stonewalled
by the game. Rather, I just didn’t feel
like I had time to give Of Orcs and Men my full attention.
Because even thought Of Orcs and Men is a relatively short
game (especially by RPG standards) and it has a brief, limited character development
system, with a set of skills that you’ll be tired of relatively quickly, many
of which you’ll ignore, it remains a serviceable, even well crafted piece of
storytelling in games. Fundamentally a
tale of redemption and friendship (granted a tentative, strange friendship),
there’s something very basic about the almost rote twists in Of Orcs and Men
that form a compelling narrative, all the more engrossing for the moments in
the game where a plot twist is telegraphed or a character has a sudden change
of heart for the sake of advancing the story.
Despite seeing each betrayal coming, and watching revolution and death
unfold in the landscape of Of Orcs and Men, I was compelled to continue
clicking, reading, listening, and watching.
And when the game reached its climactic scene and Arkhail threw the
emperor-regent from a tower in a starkly beautiful cutscene that showcased
everything Of Orcs and Men did well? I
felt like I’d accomplished something.
It’s the resolution of a hero’s journey in miniature, cast
as an anti-hero’s quest for revenge. But
within this mini-story, this microcosm of the fantasy universe, something
wonderful unfolds: a personal journey, as much about the things unseen as the
things seen. Arkhail and Styx are party
to many more dramatic, world and life changing events outside of the context of
the game than within its framework.
Arkhail loses his wife and son at the battle that effective issues the
start of the war between orcs and humans that sits at the heart of the game,
and Styx is purportedly an orc shaman whose drive for power turns on him,
twisting his body into its new shape and birthing the race of goblins from
him. This is the sort of shit you’d
usually see in video games, but instead of getting an opportunity to experience
these epic events, Of Orcs and Men’s journey centers on a small, peripheral
mission to assassinate the human Emperor.
Sure, the stakes are high, but the arc of each character involved is
miniscule, and the grandeur of the places you visit and battles you fight is
thoroughly middling. An “epic battle” in
Of Orcs and Men consists of you and your goblin buddy fighting six humans and
two orc slaves – hardly the sort of awe inspiring affair you’d see in the
climactic moments of Dragon Age or Mass Effect.
But in this low-key approach to high fantasy, there’s
strength. Because while Of Orcs and Men
doesn’t really have arcs for its characters, or really present us with the
spectacle many RPGs have made us accustomed to, it does tell a story and
develop a relationship between two characters.
And it does so handily, doling out information, allowing players to
guide the course of the relationship and reinforcing the growth of that
relationship between gameplay. If you
don’t get a good sense of how to make Styx and Arkhail work well together, Of
Orcs and Men is going to be an unpleasant affair, but if you work out how they
can fit together, the game itself explodes into conceptual fulfillment. It’s a high concept move for relatively
little reward, but it’s certainly there.
Of Orcs and Men is, in a sense, a more nuanced version of
Dragon Age 2, another game preoccupied with small stories and a concern for
eschewing high fantasy. Of course, where
DA2 shines (world building) Of Orcs and Men flops. The setting of Of Orcs and Men is hardly
fleshed out, and even when Elves and Dwarves are introduced into the mix in the
fourth act, it’s not to any real effect, in or out of gameplay: they’re simply
reskinned humans, they could’ve been anyone, and while their artistic style
hints at certain cultural and physical qualities, there’s really nothing behind
it. Likewise, the political system and the
nature of both magic and religion in Of Orcs and Men seems to shift from moment
to moment, as needed. Its strongest
point comes through in its dedication to building up an orc culture replete
with a rich history and rules and regulations that exist in a sort of
extralegal system that all orcs adhere to.
It’s a neat twist, but it’s not quite enough.
But there’s nobility in the attempt, and even if Of Orcs and
Men fails in so many ways, its relatively small scope and low budget make it an
underdog in my mind. It’s far from
perfect, to be sure, but there’s something there to love, if you give it time,
have patience, and can look past a limited, dead-end riddled skill-tree and leveling
system.
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