We. The Revolution: An Absurdly Executed Fiction

We. The Revolution:

We. The Revolution: This Game Has Lost Its Head

We. The Revolution: A Riot of Mini-Games

We. The Revolution: An Absurdly Executed Fiction

We. The Revolution is divided into three Acts, but the second only differs from the first by an elevated sense of urgency. In both the player judges regular trials, quick trials, manages the Paris map, conducts intrigue against other politicians, and “interacts” with their family. The third Act eliminates most of this to fight an unhistoric battle for Paris. The families of those brutalized by revolution raise an army. The player defends the city. The mini-game uses the same map as the previous Paris mini-game, with eleven spaces. Now Alexis commands an army composed of levies, infantry, city guards, musketeers, and artillery. The daily recruits are determined by the player's Prestige. Until this moment, Prestige held no importance, and it wouldn't surprise me to learn people hadn't managed it. I had a significant reserve of this formerly useless resource. It's easy to imagine a player arriving at this point and not having enough prestige to win. They'd have to start over, or quit and never return.

The map shows the eleven regions. Each region is marked with a number indicating the remaining population. The player is told, “Rescue the population,” and “Post troops in threatened areas.” One of the regions is the player's capital, and a second is aflame with counter-revolutionary sentiment. The enemy controls this area. The player can post a max of twelve units per space. Holding a space for a turn allows a percentage of the population to flee. Losing population hurts the player's prestige, while saving the populace increases it. One would assume that the enemy would attack from their home base, but this would be foolishly reasonable. The battle for Paris, which unfolds over two weeks, feels completely random for a number of reasons. Enemy units can attack from any edge of the map, meaning they can attack seven of the ten spaces, meaning the player can't plan a defense. The enemy appears without any warning, disrupting the players plans. The enemy has unlimited armies with which to attack. We. The Revolution is even worse strategically. The player can't retreat from an attack. The player can't reinforce areas attacked by the enemy. The player can't attack areas that have been captured by the enemy. They can only defend the areas they control. So the enemy can attack anywhere, and the player can't react. This is a strategy mini-game without any strategy. The battles themselves are not explained, but the player and opponent choose from five possible tactics. The game shows the outcome of a tactic, so the player can review and find the best one. Battles are quick and unsatisfying. This entire conflict in Paris is poorly designed, and made worse by the fact that it is completely fabricated for the strange narrative We. The Revolution wants to enforce.

We. The Revolution incorporates nine mini-games. Each is dull, each is poorly explained, none engage the player because they are too simple. The games barely connect or interact with each other. Yet, the player has to win all the games to progress.

In case it hasn't been made clear, We. The Revolution is absurdly unhistorical. Alexis is a fictional character given an oversized role. I oversaw the trial of King Louis XVI and Robespierre, and convicted both. We. The Revolution is also bizarrely scripted. I could have acquitted either (though it would have grievously harmed my reputation among the factions), but the game would have progressed as if nothing had happened. Alexis interacts with many historical figures. Unfortunately their interactions are brief. The characters have no characterization. It's almost as if the developer wants to name drop historical figures, without caring to inform the player about them. Some of the characters are made up, but the player can't tell the difference. Some stories are complete fiction. Georges Danton, Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Gobel, Grace Elliot, Jean-Nicolas Pache, Tinville, Jacques Herbert, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, Robespierre, Louis Capet, and Bonaparte all make appearances, along with an equal number of unhistorical characters. Not every historical figure suffers their true fate.

Through Alexis, the player is forced to commit many abhorrent actions. At one point I was forced to acquit a pedophile and murderer because convicting him meant losing the game. On the other hand, I also had to execute innocent civilians. Intrigue mini-games story force the player to order the assassination of innocent persons. Like Spec Ops: The Line, We. The Revolution is trying to craft ethical dilemmas. The developers are trying to make the player feel the weight and guilt of their decisions. It didn't feel real. It didn't feel ethically compelling, because the player lacks any agency. The player can't alter what happens to their family. They aren't given a bad choice and an escape (aside from not playing the game), or a compelling reason for why they commit atrocities to advance. Alexis could back down from his aggressive attempts at power, but the player isn't offered these. The enemies aren't well developed. They lack humanity, and therefore, sympathy. The developers fail to write a convincing story that makes the player feel emotionally responsible for their decisions. We. The Revolution fails to convey the strong feelings of anger, fear, sadness, pride and disgust inherent in that emotional era.

The art style doesn't help. Visually, We. The Revolution has an angular cubic style that some reviewers praised, but did nothing for me. The trials are conducted in near silence, a disconcerting situation. Also, and I am not an expert on accents, but the voices sound too Anglo-Saxon. Only some of the dialogue is read by the characters. The voice actors seem bored, but sometimes are prodded into overacting their parts.

While most of We. The Revolution is a series of mediocre and mundane mini-games stitched together into one poor fabric, the worst part is the plot. As already mentioned, the protagonist, Alexis Fidele, is a reformed drunk that seeks to uphold the ideals of revolution. To do this, he eliminates those who disrespect the people. Over the course of We. The Revolution the player is forced to brutalize the powerful, and occasionally the innocent. His family suffers or betrays him. Just when Alexis has reached the top, hoping to end the Reign of Terror and secure a peaceful future for France, the developers spring a bogus, anti-historical twist on the player. The twist is delivered with almost no set up. The twist is so absurdly asinine I am going to spoil it with not an ounce of guilt.

We. The Revolution reveals that the secret person working to defeat Alexis was his brother, the dead one. The brother, furious at their father for his exile, blames Alexis for everything bad that happened to him, even though the game starts with the brother already presumed dead. The brother preposterously takes responsibility for every one of Alexis successes and his sufferings (and I mean everyone one. Every action Alexis took is shown in flashbacks to be a choice he was manipulated into by his brother). We. The Revolution takes a historical event of millions of people and transforms it into a conspiracy of a single man bent on revenge against his innocent brother. The battle for Paris is his final strike. The brother leads the attack with the outraged families that suffered during the Reign of Terror. Two unhistorical brothers battle for the heart of Revolutionary Paris. Even when you win, you're forced to play a final game of dice with the brother. And even when you defeat the brother, he claims he really won, because the purpose of his counter-revolution wasn't to defeat you in battle, but to allow a then irrelevant military commander, Napoleon, to sweep in, rescue the city, and earn the love of the people of Paris. He wanted Napoleon to rise to power. Contradictory, a final after credits epilogue (set in modern times) shows the tombstone of Alexis Fidele, where a woman praises him as the man who saved Paris.

In Conclusion,

Normally the length of the review roughly correlates with the time spent playing the game. But while I found We. The Revolution short and without merit, I still found it oddly compelling like a car crash or train wreck. It requires the player to navigate a balancing act with the faction opinion, by playing deadly dull mini-games. The mini-games are too simple, too short, and the opponents play them poorly, if at all. At the same time the story continually condemns the player as a bad person for Alexis' abhorrent actions. The player is frustrated by the writer, as they force Alexis to commit atrocities, where there should be other options. As an already developed but unhistorical character, the writer ascribes false motivations that don't agree with the players. I wanted to finish We. The Revolution to its bitter end, but I wouldn't recommend anyone else do the same. It pretends to be about morality, but is just a numbers game. At the end it spits in the players face by mocking them. When Alexis is seriously wounded by an assassination attempt, he is revived by a puppet master. The puppet master asks if he would like to die or live. I have no clue what happens if the player chooses to die, but if they choose to live and win, they see the puppet master again. As Alexis' brother explains his absurd plot to place Napoleon in power, as Napoleon rides in triumph into Paris, the player sees the puppet-master holding a puppet that looks exactly like Alexis.

This isn't witty or smart. It's a brainless breaking of the fourth wall to tell the player, yeah you're a puppet.

Don't be. Don't play this game.

Recent:

The Presidential Events: April 2022

Relevant:

Football, Tactics & Glory: From Stardom to the Sidelines and Back

Into The Breach: Can't Catch Light(ning) in A Bottle Twice

Sunless Sea: Daring The Dark