Old Man’s Journey (Xbox One)
With some stories, the emotional resonance of the tale being told will entirely color whether or not you find it enjoyable. If something hits you in the right way or manages to remind you of your own life experiences, it can quickly elevate itself beyond the actual substance of the tale, and that seems like the place a game like Old Man’s Journey occupies. Even if you don’t have any way to relate to a story though, there are still ways a narrative can be conveyed to make it enjoyable or effective, the nature of the story-telling still allowing us to look at this game without having to so heavily rely on whether or not it happens to pluck a particular person’s heart strings.
One of the first choices that impacts the efficacy of the narrative is its lack of any text or speech. Old Man’s Journey relies heavily on the expressions of its central character and the people he meets to convey the emotion of a scene, and to this end it does do its job well enough. It’s clear from the start of the tale that the letter the old man receives is of great importance, and when he takes off on his journey from his seaside home across the land it’s pretty easy to assume his quest is motivated by something with weight to it. The ambiguity of some of it doesn’t last long though, as during his journey there are many points this unnamed old gentleman will sit down and look around, his surroundings or the people he meets evoking wonderfully illustrated glimpses at his past, a history of life and love learned as he revisits old places or finds places and situations that remind him of those lost moments.
Perhaps this is the area the game could have delved deeper though. Wistful reflection on the past is an easy enough emotion to relate to and the tale being told isn’t too personalized to the protagonist. Early on the route the tale will take is fairly apparent despite taking a few smaller unexpected routes to get there, but even with a pretty simple and predictable tale, it does make good use of things like reserved but readable character expressions to evoke a subtle melancholy even before it cranks up the emotional drama. Even its climax is fairly subdued and has an odd beauty to it with the small choices it uses to wrap up the journey, although the art style and music definitely help this along as they help lend more emotion to scenes than the actions alone would carry. Even outside the flashbacks there are some gorgeous looking areas the old man must travel through with excellent use of color and layers to make what could be excellent art outside of its video game context. The soundtrack can even carry the emotion pretty well, carrying the adventurous spirit of the old man, the tone of a new area he’s found, or dipping into softer sadness for the story beats.
There is definitely a lot of work put into helping this story have the best chance of reeling in a player, emotional hooks strewn about to try and help it overcome a pretty predictable tale that taps on pretty familiar story of life, love, and regret. Emotionally receptive people will be hit hard by it because of the work on evoking certain feelings from a player, but besides those moments where it strikes you with something visually splendid or designed to appeal to your heart, Old Man’s Journey spends most of its time away from the resonant moments to instead engage with a gameplay style that doesn’t do too much for the plot, meaning of the story, or the efficacy of its emotional appeals. The main mechanic of Old Man’s Journey is the idea the player can move a cursor around to drag different layers of the environment up or down, the old man able to hop between them if they are aligned properly. In essence, the depth of the image is an illusion when it comes to traversal, as the old man can hop between two hills in different layers if the line of their curves intersect. When you first encounter this it is a bit remarkable to see the vivid environment now so malleable and interactive, but the limitations of it become apparent and begin to drag down the experience heavily as they end up more emphasized than the story being told.
Most of Old Man’s Journey is about these long moments of traversal where you are grabbing and pulling hills to line them up, and it becomes pretty clear the game doesn’t have many ideas for how this can work as anything more than busywork. Sometimes a hill might have something behind it, other times you need to move sheep around between hills so they don’t block your path, and small obstacles like waterfalls can prevent you from crossing areas safely, but there’s not much thought put into most of the game’s navigation. You need to get to the next hill so you grab it and begin tugging it around until its either lined up properly or you learn it can’t be moved that way, no real visual indicator telling you how far a certain piece of the environment can be dragged up or down until you’re learning its limits through experimentation. You can’t move the area you’re standing on either, so this can lead to hopping around and finding out what object is the one you must move to get things going rather than figuring out something with a more meaningful challenge that requires thought, consideration, or a proper engagement with the game’s mechanics.
It’s not without its moments at least. Things like needing to roll big wheels down hills with enough speed to break barriers asks for a small amount of thought, and the game does nearly begin to test this gameplay style with concepts that could have work. At one point, the old man rides a train to his destination, the player needing to pull tracks down in front of it to keep it moving. If you aren’t fast enough… well that’s okay, the train patiently waits as long as you need. If you try to keep it moving without interruption it could be thrilling, but the fact the game doesn’t require this and sometimes gives you little time to pull the tracks down means you can’t engage with the potential this had for a decent interactive moment. The narrative focus ends up being so heavily emphasized the designers don’t want you getting stuck along the way, trying to keep you moving forward by making no failure states for what could have been the game’s highlights, the game lacking any effective action or puzzles that can really pull the player in. The flashbacks and moments of introspection from the old man are meant to be rewards peppered through to keep this tale moving, but few are substantial or weighty enough to really give you something to chew on before you engage with more of the simplistic hill dragging that truly makes up most of the experience.
Your ability to enjoy Old Man’s Journey isn’t likely to be completely destroyed by this bland and imprecise gameplay style, but it does mean that if the emotional story and wonderful visuals don’t hit you just right, there isn’t a lot else going on here. Even basic navigation can be a bit of a task, since this port of a mobile game tries to keep its touch screen controls with an on-screen cursor instead. To move somewhere you need to click the area you want the old man to walk, and this can lead to constant issues like him moving to a hill you were trying to drag. There are some little touches along the journey, characters you can click on with the cursor to get achievements explaining who you saw, but these are meaningless flavor and don’t really tie to the personal quest of the main character. It is definitely tempting to try and read some meaning into certain legs of the journey, a more fanciful plunge underwater perhaps having the most potential to be read into, but others like herding sheep around and riding in hot air balloons are just there to make the journey seem more interactive or more grand than the the actual traversal ends up being.
THE VERDICT: Old Man’s Journey could have, or possibly should have, been an animated short film. All of its strengths, from the lovely backing music to the gorgeous environments and art style, could be brought over along with its wordless tale of love and loss. Every part that is emotionally evocative or looks splendid does not benefit from the gameplay that’s been tacked onto the tale. Dragging hills around is finicky and the movement in general is awkward on Xbox One, but while the settings of the journey contribute to the story well, the way the old man moves through it gameplay-wise is disconnected and lacks anything substantial or challenging to make it more than a barrier to getting the brief looks at the plot. Old Man’s Journey might resonate with many players thanks to the incredible work put into selling the simple narrative, but the interactive parts make getting through it most of the experience about doing busywork or navigating through dull fluff.
And so, I give Old Man’s Journey for Xbox One…
A BAD rating. As a piece of art solely, there is a lot to love in Old Man’s Journey, from the stylish environments to the way the animation and still imagery can work together to tell an emotional tale quite well, but its choices to remain wordless and split so much of into spaced out flashbacks keep it from having the punch that could overcome its narrative simplicity. The gameplay could have helped it shine even brighter though if it was an enjoyable activity between your looks at the old man’s life, but instead it never really finds much of a footing, beginning to embrace ways its environment dragging could be made thought provoking or challenging but pulling back before it risks becoming too interesting on its own. The play does contextualize itself differently at times and takes you on excursions to interesting looking areas, but the interface does begin to frustrate with the ease of misclicking and the many uncooperative objects.
The moments of play are more prevalent than the brief tastes of plot, so it would feel inaccurate to place the weight of the experience solely on the simple yet mostly effective emotional tale at its center. This is very much a game about the journey, not the destination, despite the fact the destination is more satisfying because it lets the story breathe more while the journey dabbles in barely realized busywork mechanics. You might get something from Old Man’s Journey and its moving narrative, music, and art, but you won’t get much out of the 2 or 3 hours you spend moving uncooperative hills to experience those nice touches.