I wanted to like this game.
The premise is so appealing, on the surface. A setting so far in the future society has become nearly unrecognizable, a perfect society of immortals disrupted by an unforeseen event, people coming to terms with a paradigm shift as they grapple with the inevitability of death and destruction? I am all about that stuff. So where did it go so wrong?
Cliché, first off. Despite the ingenuity of the premise, the story never does anything interesting; it falls back on tired cliché every single time. The authorities are corrupt and petty but in ways that are beyond the ken of our puny mortal minds because politics is hard, man. Scientists are only concerned about their own egos, not the actual problems at stake, and are therefore useless and untrustworthy. The protagonist has a secret super-special history that never actually matters. And instead of proper antagonists, we get orks. Oh, but racism is still wrong, even though all the actual evidence points to the contrary. To say nothing of the characters, who are all collections of shallow sci-fi clichés and stereotypes.
This is just boring. We’ve seen it all before. It’s not treading new ground, it’s not saying anything new. And because of that, it forfeits the ability to discuss any themes in an interesting manner. I can’t engage with this as a meaningful statement on society, decadence, and inevitability when the story is riddled with offensive strawmen caricatures with no bearing on reality. Nobody acts realistically or sensibly, and there’s nothing profound to be had when playing with incoherent self-sabotaging idiots whose motivations change from scene to scene. Give us real people, give us scientists with varied motivations, give us science projects that don’t exist to prove that science will always fail us, and maybe this story could have had something worthwhile to say. Let us engage with issues that mirror reality, not some strange sci-fi bizarroverse. And don’t waste our time with frickin’ orks.
Secondly, and perhaps relatedly, the plot is a train wreck. It skips merrily from one cliché plotline to another without resolving anything or really following logically from anything else. Post-apocalyptic rebuilding! Now we’re working for a shady omnipotent corporation! Now new secretly evil group out of nowhere! Now Ros is the Chosen One! The story leads us on with Shocking Twists, but can’t give us any satisfying conclusions when the tab comes up.
Not even the game seems to know what story it was trying to tell. Show of hands, who forgot the Shine was a thing? I wouldn’t blame you, because the game seems to forget sometimes too. Despite being the inciting event, it never has any long-lasting consequence. After episode 1, the story doesn’t feel post-apocalyptic at all – Typelog is totally fine due to plot fiat, and EROS doesn’t seem affected at all. The apocalypse is ultimately irrelevant to the greater plot, which is just your standard space opera intrigue between factions that seem to be at their full strength. Remember all the fuss in episode 1 over how the network was shredded and no one could communicate? By episode 4 the only concern is that Typelog will listen in on their perfectly intact network. Supposedly the Shine radically changed peoples’ behavior and precipitated the conflict, but we never saw what society was like before, so this has no meaning. If you remove the Shine, nothing has to change. A stable society can fall to petty conflict just as easily.
And to make matters worse, nothing ever gets resolved. This story is not a self-contained narrative. The Reconstruction, for all its plotlessness, at least was able to resolve its main threads with only a few open-ended sequel hooks. We get no such benefit here; the narrative is all questions and no answers. Why and how did the Lessers form a horde? ERROR YOUR ANSWER IS IN ANOTHER GAME. What is The Black One and what’s his relation to Tezkhra? ERROR YOUR ANSWER IS IN ANOTHER GAME. What’s latent energy? ERROR YOUR ANSWER IS IN ANOTHER GAME. Could the Progenitor’s plan actually work and what are the metaphysics behind it if so? ERROR YOUR ANSWER IS IN ANOTHER GAME. Who were the other researchers and are they still important? ERROR YOUR ANSWER IS IN ANOTHER GAME. What is the tatzylvurm and what does it have to do with all of this? ERROR YOUR ANSWER IS IN ANOTHER GAME. What was that conversation with Tez in the ending? ERROR YOUR ANSWER IS IN ANOTHER GAME (though at least one that’s already been released). And that’s just the mysteries the game didn’t forget about. Who augmented The Black One’s leg? Why was he hanging out in the comm station to begin with? Who was collecting the Lessers from Typelog? Who was “that lacertian”? It is a mystery.
The one question that really got answered is “What caused the Shine?” but in doing so it raised a dozen others. And that’s just manipulative. You can’t make a story that’s nothing but sequel hooks and market it as a self-contained narrative; that’s selling an incomplete product. I have no idea what point the story is really trying to make because I don’t know the final verdict on anything. Maybe I totally misread the ending and it’s actually going to turn out that we can save the universe using magic and the Progenitor’s plan was just going about it wrong! Or maybe “let’s all drown in nihilism and die” is still going to be the final resolution. I have no idea. But the fact remains that, as things stand, there is no plot arc, just people walking in a circle.
And on that note, the character subplots had to be part of the main plot. I said at the start that I loved the optional conversations, but looking back I don’t think that was the right way to go about it. Their compartmentalization robs them of the space to say anything meaningful, and making them completely optional and divorced from the main plot requires everything to have a status quo ending, which is just unsatisfying and terrible storytelling. Especially for big stuff like Deirdre’s plot that implies a whole big, complex mystery behind it, they need the space a proper plot deserves. Devoting main plot time to character development would also spice up some of the slower sections. (I’m still impressed with how deftly Last Scenario handled its “filler” dungeons by using them as space for character development scenes, ensuring that there were never any dead zones where no plots advanced at all.) You have to balance this stuff.
And a good story should have its character details be relevant to and interwoven with the main plot anyway, because in a good story characters and their motivations should have active roles in the plot. Like, wow, imagine if Sakura’s backstory and Ilya’s relation to Shirou and all that stuff in Heaven’s Feel was relegated to optional scenes? What a trainwreck that would be! Either the main plot would make no sense without them, or the optional scenes would have to have really unsatisfying open-ended conclusions because the stuff they bring up can never be addressed in the main plot. In I Miss the Sunrise, we get the latter.
I had hoped, going in, that I would be able to say that I Miss the Sunrise was, overall, a clear improvement over The Reconstruction. But at the end of it all… I can’t be so sure. For every step forward, it seems to have taken a step back. There is definitely more content, characters get more attention, the unique assets make everything a lot more professional… but at the same time, everything feels so sterile. The Reconstruction had low lows, but it also had high highs – Dehl, Havan, Skint, a legitimately shocking and exciting endgame. I Miss the Sunrise just flattened everything out into bland, forgettable mediocrity. We had a plot this time (or more accurately, four separate plots hastily stitched together), but it made no sense. The massive cast got more screentime, but the game didn’t seem to know what to do with it, and we didn’t get any characters that went above and beyond like Dehl or Havan. And you already know my thoughts on the battle mechanics – but now, I can go further and say the missions were disappointing too. I remembered almost every quest from my first playthrough of The Reconstruction, because every one felt unique and almost every one did something special and interesting with the mechanics. There were real puzzles, you had to split up your party to accomplish things, there was flavor text and NPCs we could interact with to learn more about the world. Here, there were multiple times I went “Huh? I don’t remember this at all!” And can you blame me? So many of the missions are just… hope you like staring into the void of space while fighting repetitive, practically identical enemies, forever! There’s no soul to it anymore.
I Miss the Sunrise is all flash and no substance. I mean, it’s good flash – the attention to detail is amazing, the Typelog superhub and EROS research station are breathtakingly beautiful, and the soundtrack moved me to tears. And if this was just some B-movie, designed for quick, mindless entertainment and nothing else, that might be fine. But I don’t think I’m being unreasonable to judge this game as something more. It clearly wants to play in the big leagues, to say something profound, to hold up to critical scrutiny. And if it does, then flash can’t make up for lack of substance.
But there is one upside here, and that’s that, unlike The Reconstruction, I think I know how to fix this.
The biggest flaw in the story is that it’s built on the backstory, but we never see any of it. We are told that there was an apocalypse on Earth that precipitated the initial flight into space, and that not only is this important to various characters’ histories and current motivations, it’s a parallel to the disaster in episode 4. But we never get any details on it, so we can’t understand this directly, and we have no emotional investment in it. Similarly, we are told that society was very different before the Shine, but also that it was very different from modern society, so… what was it like, exactly? The dissonance between pre- and post-Shine society is the central tenet of the plot and world, but we’re given nothing to go off of.
So: show, don’t tell. Use the immortality theme to its fullest by letting Ros live through multiple eras.
We’d begin during the Breach itself. Ros was made as a weapon for one of the wars ravaging the planet, or maybe just some novelty science project because people are fiddling while the world burns. She escapes from the lab and we get to see the ruined Earth for ourselves as she makes her way to the exodus ships. Perhaps there could even be an Important Choice™ of whether to go through proper channels and get selected or to sneak aboard – she would meet Marie or Alicia, depending, and those connections would carry over to future sections. Ros could get exposition on the details of the apocalypse here, so we know exactly what the state of things is right now and what led to this catastrophe.
And it occurs to me that we might even be able to make Lazarus sympathetic! Say he’s her first party member, and either helps her escape or just escapes with her and helps her reach the ship.
From there we can have a full plot arc about how the members of the Breach survive in space and make a new life for themselves. There would obviously be a lot of physical hurdles, but, if we’re keeping the theme of futility and conflict as a cycle, there should also be political strife that mirrors the conflict that tore Earth apart. We would see the beginnings of the suppression movement and why it’s necessary; we could see everyone going stir-crazy and perhaps the climax could be Ros exposing some petty, emotional conspiracy that’s going to destroy what’s left of humanity.
Of course, this also exposes her, and so her original creators (Thomas?) come knocking. It’s vitally important for us to see what suppressed society looks like, so perhaps she could keep doing missions under them for a little while – but eventually, she is deemed unnecessary and locked in suspension. She gets the same dramatic speech Thomas gave her in canon, but this time it’s not an empty threat: she really does sleep until the next iteration of society.
Then the Shine happens. While it would be more dramatic for her to experience it directly (like, her holding tank shatters from the blast and she’s rescued by the Inquiry), we could also just follow I Miss the Sunrise’s plot more directly: she wakes up in an unfamiliar place and has no idea what’s going on. She notices Lazarus’ tank is empty, asks around, and gets told what happened, which obviously freaks her out. This would give her a lot more reason to be hostile and suspicious, and do a much better job of fostering suspicion with the player as well, since we would have emotional investment in Lazarus and Ros’ original captors and have no idea what these people are up to.
From there the normal plot can happen, but with more focus on the post-apocalyptic theme. Typelog is not totally fine and does not have the resources for wacky projects, and let’s just say EROS doesn’t exist or is maybe replaced by some minor nameless research organization (since we still need lacertians, the Shine, and the PLSE project). The plot would revolve around rebuilding like in episode 1, as well as investigating how Typelog is coping with the Shine (not well) and the source of the Shine, which they eventually find much like in canon – but this time the attempt killed the guy, because seriously. (I also like avoiding the neat resolution – you don’t get vengeance, the guy already died.) They also find the notes discussing the imminence of the Big Crunch, which is the real shocker. Everyone is very disturbed, Tezkhra most of all.
I also said that Sorenson needed some shady motive for him to amount to anything… maybe he’s anti-Typelog and this “inquiry” is at least in part motivated by a desire to pick Typelog apart and establish himself as the new dominant power. This would further the theme of petty conflict being inevitable, and would provide a reason for Sorenson’s sudden hostility in the final chapter, if Ros finds out.
Marie and Alicia would also be very important here, since Ros has met them before, and they should play a large role. Maybe with Alicia in a sort-of oppositional role like Jessamine, because I like the idea of shifting allies and enemies. Their reunion would carry a lot more emotional weight, too, since we saw the origin of their conflict and already know about their relationship.
Lazarus can show up at some point (an old ally becomes a new enemy! What a shocking turnabout that definitely won’t happen again!), either as a recurring boss like I suggested or as a shadowy mastermind. Despite the Inquiry‘s attempts to keep the apocalypse notes secret, they get leaked (Typelog, probably), and when Lazarus sees them he snaps and decides to stop caring about anything and let the galaxy burn. If the world is going to end, what matters except your own pleasure? Perhaps this is what inflames the war, because the final conflict should follow logically from the inciting event, with Lazarus fanning the flames. The final chapter is therefore focused fully on deescalating the war, either with Sorenson’s cooperation because he’s not an idiot or without if he’s evil and fighting the war for his own gain.
But just when they think they’ve won, Lazarus escapes and returns with an army of MOD units that he uses to destroy the Inquiry and the Machinatorium out of spite. The crew manages to track him down and he gives a long rant about what he’s learned and the meaninglessness of everything so everything should just die. Either he delivers a jamming pulse or the crew does because protagonists should be proactive darn it, and we have a dramatic final battle where they finally kill him. I think it would be okay for Ros to feel sad about it in this version of events.
The galaxy is safe, but now the crew is adrift with no goal. They’re picked up by some third party, like Thomas or Alicia or something, who decide Ros should sleep for now. Directly seeing the damage wrought by Lazarus could provide some sensible motivation for this.
The next time Ros wakes up, it’s at the twilight of the universe. The Big Crunch is coming and everyone knows it, the stars are going out, reality is coming apart at the seams. She’s no longer necessary, but has been freed out of pity – it’s not like she can do any more damage, so she might as well enjoy a full life while she can. For the first time in her life, Ros isn’t under anyone’s thumb and can do as she pleases. She observes how society has changed and reconnects with the old crew (maybe learning some of them have died).
She’s about to resign herself to her fate when suddenly, she gets a message from Tezkhra. She follows the coordinates to find the Core. Tezkhra excitedly rambles about how now that she’s here everything can be fixed! See, the guy who made the Shine, his plan almost worked! It almost did! And now Tezkhra’s finally figured out what he did wrong: don’t push outward, but pull inward. He delivers the rest of the Progenitor’s speech in full, and Ros is given the choice to obey or disobey.
From there things can play out as in canon, but we should directly see the consequences of the choice, since otherwise it lacks punch. The outcome of the compression shouldn’t be left ambiguous: If we’re really committed to the “all is futile, abandon hope” theme, we need to see it unambiguously destroy reality forever, otherwise we need to see something implying the universe will begin anew. Likewise, the “”optimist”” route should acknowledge the fact this means everyone is going to die instead of acting like life can just go on like nothing happened.
I think a really poignant ending would be Ros heading to an Earth-like planet with Marie and using her time dilation ability to watch the sunrise… because the sunrise, like life, is ephemeral, but Ros can make it last just a little bit longer by using her powers – for once not in a matter of life and death, but because she chooses to. Wouldn’t that be so much more fitting a title drop than what we got?
…But, I’m not really sure if upholding the themes on display here is worth it. It’s so hard for me to understand what was going through the developer’s head. The morals and final message just seem so awful. What was it even trying to say? That death is inevitable? Yeah well no duh death is inevitable, you don’t get points for pointing out the obvious. What makes art profound is what it does with the points it brings up. Yeah, this is an important topic, but the only answer the author seems to offer is “No hope, get the rope.” That just isn’t satisfying to me. I want to believe there’s more to life than that, that we can do more than just throwing in the towel. I want to live.
I want to live. And that means I can’t support a narrative that tells me I should want to die.