The gods are among us. They walk with men, they live with them; What's more: they are true human beings, with all the defects and weaknesses of the case. This was the premise of American Gods (2001), a novel by Neil Gaiman, winner of the Nebula Award and the Hugo Award in 2002. More than twenty years later, the video game Stray Gods: The role-playing musical takes the same basic concept, transporting it into an expertly crafted urban fantasy setting with an exceptional cast.
Music is the basis of Stray Gods: so that's it summer studies decided to turn to a veteran composer like Austin Wintory (Journey, Abzu, The Pathless) to construct the complex melodies that Grace and the deities of the Greek pantheon face during the adventure. Of the actors that make up the prestigious group of voice actors, many come from The Last of Us: we have Laura Bailey (Grace), Troy Baker (Apollo, in an unusually monotonous performance for the actor's high level), Ashley Johnson (Calliope) and Merle Dandridge (Aphrodite). The writing was entrusted to the pen of David Gaider, former main writer of several video games in the Dragon Age series.
We will discover if this rich cast managed to give a living voice to the stories of Grace and the Greek pantheon in ours. Review of Stray Gods: The Role-Playing Musical.
The gods are among us.
Set in the present day in a fantasy world, Stray Gods begins by introducing us to the young girl. Gracia, fresh out of college and looking for her way in the world. Her friend Freddie invited her to join her band and auditions are being held for more band members. Suddenly, an exceptional singer enters the scene: Calliope, a mysterious girl who, that same night, will break into Grace and Freddie's house and, dying of mysterious causes, will transfer power from her to Grace.
The protagonist of Stray Gods will thus become one Musa and she will discover that she has more pressing matters to think about than the (very common) problem of finding her place in the world at the age of twenty: Athena and the entire pantheon of Greek gods will force her to prove that she did not kill Calliope within one week . Otherwise, Grace will be sentenced to death. Here, therefore, Grace will have to explore the world with a new awareness: that the gods are among us. Forcing them to express their feelings with songs, the new muse will find himself investigating the members of the Greek pantheon and her secret plots, hoping to save her life in the space of seven days they have granted him.
Beyond the curious subversion of the rules of all reasonable judgment, the premises are certainly not among the most original and, unfortunately, the writing stumbles upon too many naiveties: we have discovered the true culprit from the beginning of the adventure due to excessive obviousness. . , not to mention that the number of passages in which information that is essential for Grace is conveniently hidden (and that there really is no point in hiding for those who possess it) is truly excessive. Furthermore, there are real contradictions. For example, one of the deities says that she is sure she wants to convict Grace of murder at the beginning of the adventure, but it is enough to meet her later to know that she even finds the premises on which Grace's supposed consciousness is based. she relies on "absurdity." Soon, something is wrong, although Stray Gods ultimately has at its core a murder mystery with decidedly traditional contours.
As for the rich cast of characters, decidedly successful stories (that of Aphrodite) are combined with less convincing ideas and interpretations (we mentioned above the case of Apollo/Troy Baker). The narrative arc of the protagonist is, ultimately, incomplete: Grace's vicissitudes do not lead her towards a path of transformation and growth, at least revealing themselves as a confusing jumble, in which the young woman is incapable of shining with her own light. She doesn't help an excessive amount of fill dialog lines, devoid of any real interest, even more surreal considering that Grace has a limited time to adapt to the new rules of her existence and, in the meantime, attempt a difficult investigation to save her life. Decidedly brilliant, however, is her friend Freddie (played vibrantly and convincingly by Janina Gavankar), capable of outshining the protagonist on more than one occasion.
Power of music
As a muse, Grace has the power to induce her interlocutors to express their feelings through music. Here, therefore, various exchanges will occur between the characters in an orchestrated manner, with a good level of singing from the different performers called to assume the role of the mercurial Greek divinities. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical lies precisely in these phases: the player's choices will direct the musical exchanges and change the course of events, which however will maintain a fairly fixed direction in their general outlines. Stray Gods has several possible endings, and the songs themselves change depending on the crossing selected by the user, with a dynamic management of the melodies that constitutes the curse and the delight of the entire adventure.
If the idea is certainly fascinating, the realization, however, does not shine fully. Only pieces with a clear melodic direction manage to remain in the ears for longer than in listening (this is the case of the memorable "Lost Girls"). In other cases, the soundscape quickly becomes confusing and ultimately anything but memorable, and the lyrical writing often seems stilted and unfocused. Fluctuations in the audio mix certainly don't help, and this applies both to the purely musical phases (in which, sometimes, the instruments completely prevail over the singing, or vice versa), as well as to the dialogues, with some very vocal voices. loud and others at the edge of the feet, which forced us to constantly change the volume.
Many variations are proposed: from the Cockney accent of a Minotaur in love to the imperious tones of a rocker Persephone. Regarding the interaction between the audiovisual and visual sectors, the splendid comic-style drawings work very well in the static phases, although they are insufficient - given the lack of dynamism of the animations - to express the emotional richness of the exchanges between Grace and the secondary characters of the adventure. The related songs are very satisfying. romance possible between the protagonist and the other gods, based on precise choices made by the player during the adventure.
Trouble on Olympus
However, what stands out most is the state in which Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical arrives. Nintendo Switch. Version 1.0.2., which we tested immediately before the release of Summerfall Studios' work and in the days after release, requires careful cleaning of the game code, as well as increased attention to the representation of the characters of the game model . Something strange for a product that does not test Nintendo hardware, with a limited number of animations and a limited overall duration, which is around seven hours.
Throughout our game, we encountered continuous problems when managing the models of the protagonists, often blurry, despite the impeccable state of the backgrounds. Even more considerable are the problems related to the adventure's progression, marred by frequent accidents which forced us to repeat several phases of Grace's path. Additionally, a bug prevented us from accessing the last half hour of the game. All this is a real shame, also because, in our opinion, Stray Gods would be an excellent product to enjoy on the Nintendo home console, both in TV mode and in portability. Finally, we point out the absence of a Spanish translation: to enjoy Stray Gods a more than decent knowledge of the English language is necessary, given the considerable amount of texts and dialogues.
Conclusions
Tested version Nintendo Switch digital delivery Nintendo eShop Price 29.99 € Holygamerz.com 5.0 Readers (5) 7.7 your voteStray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical is an interesting, but imperfect experiment. Additionally, the Nintendo Switch version is, at the time of writing, plagued with technical issues and bugs that may even prevent the game from finishing. The exceptional cast of announcers, scriptwriters and musicians is incapable of reviving a product that is poorly fused in its different components and that does not always manage to find original ideas in premises that seem to have already been seen. There's still some excellent visual characterization of the characters, combined with some ideas that would have shined brightly in a stronger, more cohesive context. Try again, Grace!
PRO
- Valuable character design, with a very successful comic style.
- Some melodies stay in your head.
AGAINST
- Technically unacceptable state of the Nintendo Switch version
- History developed in a banal and obvious way, with several contradictions.
- The sound department is too muddled and inconsistent to make a mark.
- Audio mixing is usually disastrous
