“When there’s an opportunity to do more than chat, Norco is at its worst”
NORCO is a great piece of fiction but a mediocre game
Norco demanded to be played. A surreal, anti-capitalist point-and-click with striking, grungy art and writing that’s evocative, angry, and exhausted—how could I decline? I was confident it would be my jam, with comparisons to Disco Elysium and Kentucky Route Zero, as well as glowing reviews, sealing the deal.
And it absolutely did prove to be my jam, at least initially. It’s bleak and beautiful, with a strangeness that gives it the air of another reality. But it’s grounded in the problems and frustrations of the real world, where corporations pillage and pollute as a matter of course, leaving behind a string of ruined towns and people.
As a piece of fiction it’s great: Clever, pissed off, and deeply weird. But as an adventure game, or any game, it’s not quite as impressive. You just move from scene to scene, having long (but often scintillating) conversations and doing very little else. There’s not much agency to be found in Norco, just a script that you, for the most part, have to follow.
When obstacles do get flung in your way, when there’s finally an opportunity to do more than chat, Norco is at its worst. There are some puzzles, and even a few fights, but they’re more like half-hearted minigames, making you remember basic patterns or asking you to click on a circle at the right time.
It’s dire stuff—incredibly basic, equally dull, and utterly incongruous to the rest of the game. They’re bad, but the real issue is these rare moments of interactivity feel like they’ve been hammered into Norco just for the sake of it.
These minigames give the impression that they’ve been designed by someone who resents needing to add more traditionally gamey stuff to their narrative romp. They’ve been chucked in with seemingly little or no consideration. But that can’t be true. Nobody designs a party-based combat system in their adventure game (even if it is rubbish and barely used) out of a sense of obligation.
NORCO-DEPENDENT
Occasionally there are bright spot where the solutions genuinely feel creative and engaging, like using your phone to record conversations, which you can then play back to another character to manipulate them.
Instead of taking you out of your investigation to play some minigames, you’re using your most important tool in a way that makes sense. But those moments are the exception.
Problems like this crop up in a lot of narrative darlings. But games like Disco Elysium and Unavowed, which boast exceptional writing and thoughtful stories that coexist with extremely interactive systems, now make this much harder to ignore.
YOU JUST MOVE FROM SCENE TO SCENE, HAVING LONG CONVERSATIONS
As a recovering completionist, any open-world game I try in 2022 poses an inherent dilemma: How much of this world do I experience? Historically I’ve given into the guilty pleasures of Ubisoft-style games, merrily chasing question mark-laden maps and filling progress bars to 100%.
Recently, I’m taking a more direct approach. Rather than attempting everything, I’m being more selective. With Dying Light 2 and Horizon Forbidden West out this year, too, there’s only so much time.
Elden Ring presents challenges to both halves of my virtual tourist, it turns out. As you’d expect from a FromSoftware open-world game, trite modern conventions like question marks are absent. You do have a mount and fast-travel points to help you get around the Lands Between, but with the fact that hidden map fragments are necessary to reveal parts of your map, and that most enemies besides bosses are resurrected when you rest at a Site of Grace, seeing every last thing in these perilous lands can be arduous. Beyond rewarding you with all available Steam Achievements, nobody at From is patting you on the back for visiting every location and speaking to every NPC.
Instead, since I’m starting the game a month later than most, I needed to tap into my other openworld self. Feeling my usual paralysis as I step into Limgrave for the first time, I’m buoyed by a golden ray of
NOBODY AT FROM IS PATTING YOU ON THE BACK FOR VISITING EVERY LOCATION
light pointing the way. But before I follow that I stop to speak to my first NPC, a man wearing a white mask called Varré. He tells me to head towards the dramatic Gothic fortification behind him: Stormveil Castle. The ray of light is pointing a little to the right of it, so that must be the way to go.
WHITE-FACED LIAR
I’m right, but also extremely wrong. As my new nemesis Margit the Fell Omen points out to me figuratively and physically with his glowing golden swords, this is absolutely not the way. Varré must be sniggering behind his mask.
Of course this is the way, just eventually. Varré wasn’t messing me around completely, he just left out a crucial part in his instructions: Get more powerful first. I needed to level up. Find better weapons and upgrade them. Gain experience from other, lesser bosses.
To conquer the Lands Between I must explore like never before, but still take my time. In the meantime, other worlds can wait.