Nobody Wants To Die Review

Future noir is a wondrous marriage of old and new that works because of that little kernel of pessimism that lives within us over the potential grimness of what the future may hold. A little breakdown in social cohesion here, a little government overreach there, sprinkle in some decaying urban sprawl and invasive technology then BAM! Welcome to the technoapocalypse. Nobody Wants to Die channels the classic film noir of yore and transplants into a not-so-distant future where human consciousness can be encoded in a physical substance and transferred from body to body. But effective immortality proves a heady drug for those with too much power, and without a fear of mortality, what becomes of our humanity? According to Nobody Wants to Die it dies slowly in an acid rain-soaked neon nightmare.

*urge to not play this one by the books intensifies*

You play the role of detective James Karra, a cop desperately trying to get back on the beat a few weeks after an accident involving a deadly train derailment in which he’s implicated. Taking pity on our beleaguered officer, the chief gives him a simple assignment of attending the apparent suicide of a prominent societal figure and extracting an engineered substance called Ichorite from his skull. Ichorite is the game’s ubiquitous modern miracle that wraps around the brain and houses the essence of a person’s consciousness. As long as it’s not damaged it can be removed and replanted in another viable body, allowing humans to effectively cheat real death – the body may die, but the mind lives on in Ichorite. Despite the strong insistence that Karra play this one by the book and not go off on a tangent, Karra does not play this one by the books and goes off on a tangent. Karra knows this is no suicide, and as he pulls on the threads of the case he finds himself on the trail of a serial killer determined to snuff out the lives of the city’s elites and bring the whole corrupted establishment to its knees.

The setting of Nobody Wants to Die is truly brilliant, perfectly blending the old-timey goodness of classic film noir such as that seen in The Big Sleep and translating it into a dark and grimy retrofuturistic aesthetic redolent of classics like Dark City, Blade Runner and Gattaca. Replete with sultry saxophone work and mournful yet sexy trumpet warbles, this is exactly what is would look, sound and feel like if you went to sleep in 1930 and woke up in 2330. It helps that the visuals that Critical Hit Games has crafted are positively jaw-dropping too, with lighting, environmental detail and particle effects absolutely worthy of a AAA title. Whatever magic goblin the developer has chained up in the basement helping it to produce something with this fidelity on a presumably tight budget must be allowed to continue its work. Or perhaps it’s just sheer passion and talent on behalf of the developer, and no magic goblin is involved. We’ll never know.

Lifestyles of the rich and the famous

Replete with sultry saxophone work and mournful yet sexy trumpet warbles, this is exactly what is would look, sound and feel like if you went to sleep in 1930 and woke up in 2330.

Tech noir usually relies on a key sci-fi gimmick that is designed to make you start pondering whether androids dream of electric sheep. In Nobody Wants to Die, this is embodied in the aforementioned Ichorite. The idea of the transfer of consciousness is not exactly new in the genre, but the interesting twist is that in this society, Ichorite does not appear to be optional. Effectively, citizens have to ‘subscribe’ to the body they’re born with, and the free trial period only lasts until they’re 21. At that point it’s time to start paying, lest your Ichorite be pulled and stored in a bank and your soulless body sold off at auction. I’m not sure what sequence of events allowed such a brutal system to take hold, but it’s clearly one that infinitely benefits the rich over the poor. It is essentially a capitalist’s dream that is ripe for exploitation and fertile ground for the seeds of debauchery, and its compulsory nature makes all of society complicit in the slow erosion of morality. Some shady figures are certainly more actively complicit than others though, and it’s with these denizens that our serial killer and the object of Karras’s obsession takes umbrage.

While I loved the physical setting and core sci-fi premise, the fashion in which the game’s ideas are conveyed to the player and some of the hasty exposition makes it difficult to fathom at times, and there’s a pervasive sense of tonal dissonance between the events unfolding and Karra’s demeanour.    Unlike the legendary Humphrey Bogart, Karra is not so much hardboiled as he is a bit goofy and sarcastic, which is at odds with the world-weary and sombre persona he otherwise tries to cultivate. He’s easy enough to get behind though, and the burgeoning relationship with his new (and reluctant) partner Sara feels human thanks to some well crafted dialogue options. It’s a pity that those same dialogue features a noticeable amount of spelling mistakes in the subtitles as well as transcription errors that even go so far as to have conflicting meanings compared to what is spoken. The game is also screaming out for a codex or journal system that tracks the important story elements and characters, as the game assumes you are intimately familiar with all the details despite the sometimes clunky flow of exposition and world building. Some events in the late game are just downright confusing too, and I feel even multiple playthroughs are unlikely to fully unmuddy some of the murky narrative waters.

Is it proper noir without a broad in a red dress?

Critical Hit Games describes Nobody Wants To Die as an ‘interactive story,’ and I think it strikes a nice balance of feeling like you’re having an actual impact versus the more passive experience of a walking simulator, a genre to which this is at least partially adjacent. There are no fail states and only one way to sift through each crime scene using a variety of futuristic gadgets, and despite it being generally enjoyable, how you conduct your investigation doesn’t feel like you’re exerting much in the way of true agency. The core gadget is pretty darn cool though, a wrist-mounted tool that allows Karra to reconstruct the past when fed enough data in several self-contained crime scenes. By feeding the device evidence such as blood spatters and bullet trajectories, Karra is eventually able to recreate a full series of complex intersecting events to uncover the scene’s true sequence and significance. Using the reconstructor, time can be moved in forwards and reverse at will, and once you’ve fully reconstructed a scene you can replay through the whole thing, viewing the death and destruction that the serial killer typically leaves in his wake from whatever angle you choose. These scenes also allow the developer to flex its prowess in the visual department, and there are some positively stunning tableaus created via the time manipulation mechanic and the beautiful lighting and particle effects that are indicative of no small amount of artistic awareness and panache.

Despite crime scenes feeling like you’re guided through them on a relatively pre-determined path, the game infuses plenty of choice into dialogue options, and these can have the effect of opening up different options and events later on down the line. The game will inform you when a choice you have made affects the story, and while I wouldn’t call it a butterfly effect simulator like Until Dawn and the like, there are multiple endings to achieve depending on how you play the cards dealt to Karra. Unfortunately there is no chapter replay or choice summaries, so you’ll have to replay the whole game (perhaps four hours or so) if you think you can achieve a happier ending for Karra.

The environments are truly something to behold

Final Thoughts

Nobody Wants To Die is a bit of a surprise package. I was ready for the crime fiction-infused future noir tropes and the cool post-human sci-fi musings that go with the genre, but I wasn’t ready for the sheer beauty and precision of the visual presentation. With a little polish on the dialogue and narrative tone, plus some deconvolution of the story elements, Nobody Wants To Die could have achieved greatness, but at the very least it’s indicative of a very talented studio with infinite potential, and one that should be watched with a keen eye.

Reviewed on Xbox Series X // Review code supplied by publisher

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