Norco portrays the social and material consequences of the crisis from crudeness and strangeness, without losing a touch of humor.
The novel The city and the city of China Miéville takes place in two cities that coexist in the same physical space, separated by another type of barriers. The inhabitants of a city try to "deserve" all the elements of the other, identifying architectural patterns or garments features to immediately forget that they are there. Two realities that run in parallel, where the maximum transgression act is to recognize the alien between the tide of people and hold the gaze. This psychogeography is not dista from the city concept showing the debut of Geography of Robots: a fabric in which the different social classes operate at different levels within the same space, without seeing or perceiving the material consequences of the crises in the same way.
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Basic information
- Developer: Geography of Robots
- Editor: RAW Fury
- Platforms: PC
- Proven version: PC
- Availability: 03/24/2022
Norco translates us to an alternative version of Louisiana described in a style that is born from the southern Gothic but also feels at home with science fiction elements, an approach that ends up approaching the New Weird. The protagonist is Kay, a young woman who has spent a time touring North America and returns home after her mother's death. Upon arrival she discovers that her brother Blake of her is missing and every fishing of her brings a much larger mystery that includes business conspiracies, mysterious work apps and ridiculous sects born on the network.
It is played as a graphic adventure point and click, with an interface similar to Disc Elysium, which is committed to hypertext as the main interaction with the world. Although it preserves some characteristics of the genre, it is relatively parking in inventory puzzles, pulling more by obtaining information to unlock new conversations, punctual minigames and some riddle. It does not present many challenges in this section, but if we get stuck at some point we can talk to the travel companions we collect along the way to give us some clue or repeat the key information that has been possible to pass. Maybe it's surprising but it also has a quite simple shift combat system. Each character has her own handling; Kay has to press some glyphs repeating an order, some characters attack by pressing buttons rhythmically and others simply generate area damage automatically.
In any case, the narration has much more weight than the puzzles. Many times we are not so much making decisions such as coecuting the story, modifying Kay's past and glimpse the future of her at the same time. The real, the fantastic and the futuristic are intertwined naturally, as extensions of the same everything. A robot can be one more piece of unstructured family, and this does not prevent Geography of Robots from entering New Orleans historical events as part of the plot, remarkably certain deaths caused by shell gas leakage. The main trick of the game is his text, of course, with such beautiful words as Hirientes, but also time to move to that Louisiana with a detailed pixel Art. Norco finds the beauty in the most pony lover but also delves into ugliness when she touches.
Reading the previous paragraphs may certain elements of the description remember Kentucky Route Zero, but his approaches on the same subject could not be more different. Where KRZ was a trip in parallel to the economic crisis of 2008, which was evolving and changing over almost a decade by touching a multitude of topics and expanding beyond its premise, Norco captures a single instant accurately and stir up in A heavy and overwhelming atmosphere that is built both in the texts and its soundtrack. KRZ brought some note of hope; It is somewhat more difficult (but not impossible) to find it in Norco.
It is a story of the economic and social crisis, written from the margins and observing what remains after the passage of the hurricane. An inseparable plot of its physical context but with echoes that resonate globally. Speak about the survivors to the devastation of large companies that parasitize the environment, expel the inhabitants of their homes and devour the resources of some land unable to endure the rages of the rigue. Also, yes, of a recovery that has only benefited a middle class that can afford to look to another side; The Okupas Garitos become fashionable pubs, the abandoned hospitals in Lofts for artists. It is a story about the losers of the crisis, about these people that our cities "desven", suffering social consequences but also materials; Technology advances only to preach their lives even more.
All this set would work worse without the comedy branches that has to relieve that part too close to reality; Black as a blight, but comedy after all. In fact, it makes an almost reverse path to the expected: it opens with the most canonically dramatic part of the game and then develops a certain cutting mood (the main plot of Kay) while alternating some sad notes (the interludes we played with their mother Catherine, a time before the cancer consumes your body). The plot leaves more strange, more comical and at the same time most real with the appearance of a sect. This element serves as a catalyst to talk about toxic online communities and their ramifications in the physical world, putting the focus on a group that can only be described as a panda of delirious inels in search of a messianic figure that makes them forget their own mediocrity. A religion organized from invisibility and suspicion, with the theory of conspiracy as dogma.
He wanted the coincidence that while writing the analysis he would cross on my way Can not Get You Out of My Head, the last documentary of the British Adam Curtis. In his first episode, an appointment of the Specialist in Political Sciences Richard Hofstadter appeared about the close relationship between the history of the United States and the conspiracies, of the "Dark Paranoia" present since the first settlers stayed in a society whose inhabitants " They have never remote the suspicion of their minds. " In Norco, distrust towards neighbor is also the straight line that unites all points, which makes the frames converge and served as a motor for some of the most memorable moments. It is a logical consequence of that same crisis around which the game rotates: when the structure that the world supports has failed, leaving some people aside, those who see potential to use them at their own benefit will always appear.
He plays barely lasts six hours, but never decides the interest for the density of situations he presents. At that time he manages to hailar almost miraculous themes to culminate in an end of those who needed a while to recover. The graphic adventure of Geography of Robots is one of those games that manages to hit millimetric precision at the rhythms, sliding their context little by little and accelerating vertiginously in the final stretch.
Norco is a painfully real story traced with a master's degree in a plot that sits on fantasy and science fiction to make it easier to take the rest. A portrait of the consequences of the economic crisis that has no problem shooting in several directions, always with success, but also knows how to lower the tone when the moment asks for it. It is a strange, sinister, mystic, witty and visceral game; Norco contains crowds and does not loosen the pulse with any of its aspects.
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