The Fall: A Tumble Worth Taking


Released in 2014, the indie developed The Fall suffered from a lack of promotion, but recovered after a number of prominent gaming publications discovered it during a subsequent Steam Sale's Daily Deals (remember those).

The Fall Wikipedia's page describes it as a side-scrolling platformer, a member of the metroidvania genre, and an action-adventure game, but it's platformer with only five jumps, an adventure game with limited action, and Metroid but without the collectible upgrades. The Fall is closer to the modern Telltale series, or (though I haven't played them) the catalog of the revered LucasArts, like The Secret of Monkey Island.

The Fall begins with exactly that: a combat suit, like those popularized by Starship Troopers crashes on an unknown planet. The setup: the suit includes an localized AI, while the human soldier inside is unconscious. Suffering from the robot version of amnesia, A.R.I.D. (Autonomous Robotic Interface Device) reviews her three operating parameters: I must not misrepresent reality, I must be obedient, and I must protect active pilot.
Like the three Laws of Robotics it's clear any logical implementation requires a hierarchy in the order, and while ARID demonstrates the priority by emphasizing the third parameter, it becomes clear her devotion to rescuing the pilot generates irrevocable inconsistencies.

Thankfully, though ARID has fallen into a serious of connected underground caverns, she has her trusty flashlight! And though this may seem silly, the use of the flashlight is the core gameplay mechanic. Using the keyboard, or a joystick, the player aims the flashlight around the darkened chambers and rooms ARID explores. In hand it can illuminate activatable objects or items to be picked up. Rubbing the correct item against the preapproved object is the method by which the player solves puzzles or creates new items, with which to solve those puzzles. But it's not that simple. The game plays a few nasty tricks with its point-and-click mechanic. First, its easy to miss these objects: the symbol indicating the location is gray, about as small as the comma on your keyboard, and The Fall employs only gloomy settings. Another difficulty is the game offers no method to check the inventory except to activate a nearby object. Worse, some items aren't there the first time. Instead, the player is made to continue until they reach an impassable obstacle. Upon backtracking the needed object will now be available. The designers use this contrivance to extend the suspense and create the illusion of an expansion and reactive world.

For instance, after discovering a computer motherboard hidden near a coffee table, dropped by scavengers, and submerged beneath three feet of water, ARID is forced to travel through four rooms, before arriving at another flooded floor, which contains an escaped, alien, fishlike life form capable of biting through metal. Only upon backtracking through the rooms ARID just explored will a jar be found. But for the jar to serve its purpose, it's necessary to fill it with an unidentified fluid from a vending machine, which can then be brought back to the room with the fish. Once there ARID needs, only, to combine the jar with a cluster of fireflies in the air, and then place the jar on a wooden board, which causes the alien to attack it, allowing ARID to shoot it in mid jump.

And if that last paragraph didn't highlight the crucial problem nothing will. The puzzles, combining objects with items, is both incredibly obtuse and also requires significant backtracking. This obtuseness could be highlighting the theme of dysfunction and madness which pervades the unknown planet and engulfs ARID, or it could be a mistake by the developers.
Beyond puzzles, The Fall includes small stretches of combat. Within the first hour of play, ARID recovers a pistol and uses it sparingly. The Fall utilizes a cover-based system, where ARID hides behind columns or barriers, and fire at enemy droids. There are only three types of enemies, and the lack of diversity limits the variety of situations, but because it is limited it works. The player quickly learns a few truths of combat. ARID has shields and health. Shields return slowly, while health comes back as quickly as it would take for a dripping faucet to fill a bathtub. While one reviewer recommended making a sandwich between rounds of combat, its quicker to keep fighting until ARID dies. Death has no sting in The Fall, as the game every room. Upon resurrection ARID returns to full health and shields regardless of her condition when the save was made. Second, while the pistol is capable of semi-automatic fire, slowing down to land headshots produces better results than reckless exuberance. And later ARID obtains a sort of camo, where she avoid being hit by activating a stationary invisibility. It replaces using cover, which was clunky to activate anyway.

After ARID escapes the caverns, she finds herself in a decrepit robot recommissioning facility where domestic robots with difficulties are rehabilitated or scrapped. Long abandoned, her only companions in the dark shadows of decay are the Administrator, a AI who'se managed to develop sentience though he's still constrained by his programming, and the Caretaker, a robot whose psychotic vision has determined everyone (human and AI alike) require a particularly brutal reprogramming. To advance, and save her pilot, ARID is forced to prove herself through a series of everyday domestic tasks, made insane and obscene by the juxtaposition of decades of deterioration amid the darkness.
The strength of the game is in the atmosphere, the dialogue, and the tension inherent in ARID's quest to rescue her pilot while obeying her operating parameters. The Fall appears to offer choice in dialogue, but this is a deception, there is only one solution. Yet this supports the theme of The Fall and places the player in a position of stress. More than once the brutality of what was offered had me searching fruitlessly for an alternative possibility which didn't exist.

Though this article won't spoil too much, there are a few conclusions about the story. For one, after everything ARID see's during her quest to access a medical facility, she's much too surprised by the final outcome. In her situation it seems incredibly naive. And as the game progresses ARID suffers a number of internal difficulties. These conflicts allow her to push the boundaries, unlocking abilities and altering her parameters. But the game does not allow access to all the listed abilities, and the conclusion rushes her final development by not allowing all pieces to come together slowly. ARID's HAL like dedication to preserve her pilot (for those who have seen 2001 and not read the book: HAL tries to kills the crew because he was informed of the expedition's true purpose, while the human crew was told a lie, and HAL saw his human companions as compromising the secret mission), and her subsequent deterioration are rushed by the short span of the game. ARID and her situation can best be compared to as if a cockroach woke up as a human, who thought it was a cockroach.

And yet it is a short gem, with two sequels, of which the first is planned for a 2017 release.

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