Game Review: Shadowrun Dragonfall

2) This game was made on a shoestring budget — and it DOESN’T show.

You’d never be able to guess that Shadowrun Returns was one of those fan-supported Kickstarter games that pumped out a polished product on a budget of just a few million. Sure, a few million sounds like a lot, but I guarantee you with a mainstream AAA publisher like Activision, EA or Ubisoft, the same game would have been produced in twice the time with twice the budget and it would have been half as good.  The team that made this game is talented, and passionate about the project.  It shows.

3) The setting is a breath of fresh air.

As an RPG fan, I’m so burned out on overdone fantasy settings — thinly veiled Lord of the Rings knockoffs with no flair or soul.  Here, I’m left with nothing to criticize about the world of Dragonfall — it’s incredibly flavorful, original, and compelling. First of all, it takes place in an alternative, stylized, near-future replica of the real world where all the political problems of the world have gotten worse in order to serve to highlight them — think Blade Runner. The gap between rich and poor is more stark, corporations have enormous power, technology has advanced to the point that a lot of your classic sci-fi futuristic cautionary tales have come about, and on top of that people have discovered Dragons still exist and run most powerful organizations from behind the scenes.

One of my favorite things about the setting of Dragonfall is this: it takes place in Germany, a country seldom seen represented in video games, but one with rich culture, mythology, landscape, language and political discourse. Dragonfall takes advantage of one of the things video games are uniquely well positioned to accomplish but seldom do — it quietly connects you to the culture of another place, which has real world value. I don’t often think about Germany, but, if I did, I’d think about old castles, dragons, Siegfried, techno music, anarchists and Run Lola Run. All of that is present in Dragonfall and what’s more, you feel connected to it. You feel like you know Germany a little bit better, like you spent some time there, and maybe next time something happens to Germany in the real world you may find you care a little bit more.