Have you seen Blade Runner 2049? The cyberpunk epic that charms the viewer with its climate and polished visuals, but is probably a bit too convoluted for its own good and offers relatively little payoff for its massive, multi-layered plot? Now, imagine watching that movie without the context of original Blade Runner and accompanying shorts, all offering crucial pieces of worldbuilding and linking the main entries in the franchise together. How much meaning the sequel would lose and how hard to follow some of its subplots would be?
This “Blade Runner 2049 without context” metaphor is the best way to explain my feelings about Synergia, the long-anticipated cyberpunk EVN by Radi Art. First announced in mid-2017, the project gathered a lot of attention with its well-defined, gloomy aesthetic and an appealing story outline. After that, it went through a number of hiatuses, with the creator behind it often going silent for long months and many assuming the project was dead. In mid-2019, however, the full development of the game was resumed and after a successful Kickstarter campaign (and another series of delays), we finally received a finished product in August 2020 – one that, in my opinion, proved way less mystery-filled and more flawed than the promotional materials made us hope for. But why is that exactly and to is this game actually bad, or just not living up to the hype?
 |
| The few characters central to the Synergia’s plot showed great promise, however, most of them remained relatively unexplored and their stories left without closure |
Synergia tells the story of Cila, a police operative and negotiator specialized in dealing with androids, living on a far-future, desert-covered colony planet. Serving as a private contractor to the oppressive imperial government, the dominant polity of the unnamed world, she’s depressed and demotivated, barely managing to fulfil her duties despite being highly-trained and skilful in dealing with both AI and augmented humans. Soon after the game's start, however, her apathetic routine is broken when her best friend Yoko, a shady android merchant and gang leader, gifts her a replacement to her recently-defunct companion android. The new robot, Mara, seems incredibly advanced and human-like – arguably more human than the repressed and corrupt population of the imperial capital – and astonished Cila with her unpredictable and independent behaviour. Soon her unclear origins and level of intelligence, suggesting the use of illegal forms of AI, become signs of trouble, which Cila is unsure how to deal with. However, even she does not expect the real depth of the conspiracy and the significance the android might have to the future of her country (and, possibly, the whole colony).
While this setup sounds both fairly typical for cyberpunk fiction and decently complex, the way the VN approaches exploring its story is pretty unique and depending on your interpretation can be considered either minimalistic or plain lacklustre. With just a bunch of characters dominating the plot, extremely limited use of exposition and very few opportunities to explore the setting in any significant fashion, we get a core story that is largely suspended in a narrative void. Crucial elements of the plot like Cila’s past traumas and broken career within imperial special forces are very shallowly explored, while other central characters, like Yoko, barely get any development at all. I’m all for subtle storytelling and natural presentation of background information, but Synergia just gives the reader way too little to work with. The way the world is presented is even more cryptic, with some contextual information present (like web articles and messages occasionally showing up when you use computer interfaces), but not enough to get a cohesive sense of the setting. The Empire in particular, while its presence is talked about a lot in the game, is never showed much or interacted with in a manner that would justify its menacing reputation. This might be less of a problem to some readers, but for me exploring interesting visions of the future is a huge part of the appeal of cyberpunk as a genre and Synergia underdelivers heavily in this regard.
 |
| The game’s red and blue-tinted, neon aesthetic was one of its major draws and the final art do not disappoint – that is unless you find the heavily-skewed color pallet jarring |
Then there’s the pacing and overarching intrigue related to Mara which are not bad, but also not spectacular. The game is relatively lacking when it goes to tension and sense of danger. Fights or confrontations are few and far between and Cila is barely ever put in real danger, which is kind of out-of-place considering her perilous line of work and the powers she’s working against in the latter half of the story. There’s also a very real lack of story development around the midpoint of the plot, before the game branches out to “good” and “bad” route (the difference in tone between them is not as huge as those labels would suggest, with “bad” ending being more of a “neutral” one). Particularly, this is the portion when the romance between Mara and Cila should be given time to grow and gain meaning, but that’s simply impossible within the brief segment between the main intrigue being established and the final act kicking in. This makes even the yuri aspect of the game feel underdeveloped – also because we learn very little about the “mechanophilia” incident from Cila’s past, one that could give more depth to her character, her feeling for Mara and even the overall setting, as her tragic "love affair" with an adroid had serious repercussions for the whole Empire.
The resolution of the mystery plot, involving Mara’s origins and the significance of her existence, was quite imaginative, but some parts of it were also pretty contrived and unconvincing. Synergia’s promotional materials were giving a vibe of outlandish conspiracies and, possibly, deeper transhumanist themes, while the game itself was trying to build tension with a mysterious countdown to the “Synergia incident”. The real resolution of the plot was hardly that spectacular and Cila’s role in it somewhat irrelevant – whenever she has significance for the overarching story, it’s because of what other characters want from her or because of something she did in the past (and the game never shows those events, just briefly references them). While her initial apathy is explained in the plot, she’s the kind of protagonist I really don’t like in VNs – it’s fine for MC’s influence and agency to be realistically limited, but here they’re not only being tagged along by greater powers, their most interesting moments are also delegated to the vague backstory. This doesn’t make Cila a bad or unappealing character, but a poorly-utilized one – exactly because she’s a genuine badass that should get more than two or three scenes taking lead.
 |
| The game’s red and blue-tinted, neon aesthetic was one of its major draws and the final art do not disappoint – that is unless you find the heavily-skewed color pallet jarring |
From this you could probably get the feeling that I disliked Synergia or that it’s an overall poor experience, but that’s not the case. The major elements boosting its enjoyment factor are definitely the art and music. Visuals are highly-stylized, with a dark and distinct colour pallet that boosts the gloomy and oppressive feeling of the setting. While sprites and CGs are relatively simple when it goes to the level of details, they look appealing and very in-line with the cyberpunk formula. The soundtrack is exactly the kind of electronic ambience music you would hope for in a game like this and I enjoyed it a lot. At the same time, it always stayed comfortably in the background, without even threatening to distract me from the reading (which is exactly how I like things to work). Before I conclude the review, however, I also have to mention another important problem of Synergia: the English script is weighted down by spelling mistakes and occasional awkward phrasing. These issues weren’t massive, but visible enough even for a non-native speaker such as me, so take them into consideration.
So, what’s my ultimate take on Synergia? Despite all the complaining I did, the issues I write about were not something that could ruin my experience, but rather areas where I saw clear wasted potential. The game tried to tell a complex story but did not take the time (it's 6-7 hours of content) and attention to detail necessary to fully immerse the reader. I could much more easily look past the main intrigue not blowing me away if the game’s world and main characters felt alive and decently fleshed out, but they always fell short of that threshold. The result is a game that is fun enough to follow for fans of the genre, but one that never manages to rise above purely average levels. Maybe the free story DLC promised by the author will do something to give the experience some real depth, but for now, I can only recommend Synergia to people who’re particularly fond of the cyberpunk aesthetic and themes – while it hardly adds something new to the formula, it’s a decent enough iteration of it, especially on the relatively-barren landscape of cyberpunk VNs. And if the author decides to expand this universe, it can still hold a lot of promise – the foundation is solid, it just needs a lot more substance on top of it to truly shine.
Final Rating: 2,5/5
Pros:
+ Great cyberpunk aesthetic
+ Climatic soundtrack
Cons:
– Weak worldbuilding
– Underdeveloped/underexplored characters
– Average-at-best main intrigue and mysteries
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.